HARARE, Aug 08 (IPS) - As a second commissioner from the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) resigns, local opposition parties and analysts are questioning the organisation's credibility and President Robert Mugabe's victory. 

COLOMBO, Aug 08 (IPS) - Life for a widow with young children in Sri Lanka's poor agrarian areas can be harsh. Families in remote areas like Anuradhapura in the North Central Province barely eke out a living through paddy cultivation or through vegetable and other crops planted in cleared jungle shrub - Chena cultivation as it is called.

AMMAN, Aug 08 (IPS) - Journalists and media activists have begun to confront the Jordanian government over its moves to block local news websites. Two months now after the blockage, many of these sites are struggling.

WASHINGTON, Aug 07 (IPS) - New signs have emerged in recent days which indicate that extreme measures are being taken in order to suppress evidence of the pernicious effects of the energy extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking".

BOGOTA, Aug 07 (IPS) - "I was a hunter. I killed many animals," said Rosalino Ortiz, a representative of Mashiramo, a campesino organisation that monitors biodiversity in Colombia's Massif range in the southern department of Huila.

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 07 (IPS) - The growing political rift between the United States and Russia triggered by the granting of temporary asylum to U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden, who is now holed up in Moscow, is threatening to further undermine relations between the two superpowers at the United Nations.

WASHINGTON, Aug 07 (IPS) - Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman based his 2006 warrant for the arrest of top Iranian officials in the bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 on the claims of representatives of the armed Iranian opposition Mujahedin E Khalq (MEK), the full text of the document reveals.

CARACAS, Aug 07 (IPS) - The Venezuelan government's plans to develop tourism infrastructure on virtually uninhabited highly biodiverse small islands in the southern Caribbean have triggered warnings from environmentalists.

BERKELEY, California, Aug 07 (IPS) - Before an ultimatum to attack an anti-coup sit-in earlier this week, Egypt's new strongman and coup leader Gen. Abdel Fatah Al-Sissi received one of his warmest endorsements ever - something that might have been torn right out of the steamy pages of the "Arabian Nights".

BEIRUT, Aug 07 (IPS) - With Lebanon fraying at the seams under pressure from the neighbouring Syria conflict and the economy stuttering amid a political vacuum, more and more children are being pushed into labour.