News headlines in 2013, page 119

HAVANA, Jun 18 (IPS) - Jokes, songs, crude gestures and epithets that degrade people of African descent are still common in Cuba, despite the fact that the constitution prohibits discrimination based on skin colour, and in spite of more recent political measures, activists say.

GIRKE LEGE, Syria, Jun 18 (IPS) - A ban on political and even social gatherings, a bar on Kurdish language and culture; uprooting people, forced disappearances and a ‘caste' of hundreds of thousands of local Kurds deprived of citizenship... life for Kurds in pre-war Syria was probably as dire as it is today for their kin in Iran.

DUBAI, Jun 18 (IPS) - Environmental campaigners are urging the Angolan government to halt plans to mine diamonds inside a national reserve that is home to the world's last wild population of a rare antelope, the Giant Sable.

WASHINGTON, Jun 18 (IPS) - The surprise victory of Hassan Rouhani in Iran's Jun. 14 election has provoked a range of reactions here, ranging from cautious optimism about possible détente between Tehran and Washington to outright rejection of the notion that his presidency will produce any substantive change in policy, foreign or domestic.

WASHINGTON, Jun 17 (IPS) - The Supreme Court pushed back Monday against a longstanding practise in the U.S. pharmaceuticals industry under which large-scale companies pay producers of generic copies to hold off introducing those low-cost drugs into the marketplace.

WASHINGTON, Jun 17 (IPS) - In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday struck down voter application requirements demanding proof of citizenship, making it much easier for naturalised citizens to register to vote.

WASHINGTON, Jun 17 (IPS) - Edward Snowden, a low-level employee of Booz Allen Hamilton who blew the whistle on the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), unexpectedly exposed a powerful and seamless segment of the military-industrial complex - the world of contractors that consumes some 70 percent of this country's 52-billion-dollar intelligence budget.

NEW YORK, Jun 17 (IPS) - Stories of struggle can be found all over the world, from a law classroom in Oklahoma and the brutal borderlands between the United States and Mexico to a Bedouin village in Jordan and wedding parties in Morocco, as the 24th Human Rights Watch Film Festival is showcasing.

ROME, Jun 17 (IPS) - Closing the gender gap between women and men on agriculture and food security could free over one hundred million people from hunger.