News headlines in 2013, page 40

GENEVA, Oct 15 (IPS) - Iran offered a new proposal in much-anticipated talks over its nuclear programme here Tuesday in a meeting with the P5+1 negotiating team comprising the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China, plus Germany.

MEXICO CITY, Oct 15 (IPS) - A month after Hurricanes Ingrid and Manuel caused the worst destruction from a natural catastrophe in Mexico in 30 years, another disaster has come to light: hunger in communities that are supposedly served by a rural food supply programme.

ROME, Oct 15 (IPS) - Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, known as the ‘moral leader' of the Mexican left, said that his country and Central America "focus very much on the North" and should make a shift towards South America and its integration processes, in order to achieve less-dependent, alternative development conditions.

ZUG, Switzerland, Oct 15 (IPS) - A Swiss village has decided to reject tax money from the firm Glencore and to instead donate it to charities. Other towns may follow, sending a strong signal to the government to follow the U.S. and the EU and introduce transparency rules for the extractive industry.

LUCCA, Italy, Oct 15 (IPS) - Niscemi, with its 30,000 local residents and its white houses, is a typical southern Sicilian town. But it stands out not only for its ancient cork forest, but also for the Naval Radio Transmitter Facility located within the protected forest itself.

TOKYO, Oct 15 (IPS) - Two and a half years ago, Ayako Oga, now 30, found herself helpless as an earthquake and the tsunami it triggered hit Japan and crippled four reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. She and her husband were forced to abandon their village Ookuma Machi, barely five kilometres away.

CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee, Oct 15 (IPS) - The news for environmental journalism in the United States is grim and getting grimmer.

GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Oct 14 (IPS) - Climbing up the coconut industry has been anything but easy for Rosamund Benn, who has dedicated the past 32 years of her life working on a 50-acre coconut farm in The Pomeroon, a farming region of Guyana.

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (IPS) - The day that a much-heralded new round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 Western powers opens on Iran's nuclear programme might seem the wrong day to pick up Unthinkable, Ken Pollack's new exploration of what to do if talks fail.

GOPALPUR, India, Oct 14 (IPS) - "No casualties have been reported till now," India's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) declared at 9:30 am the morning after the near Super Cyclone ‘Phailin' made landfall in India's east.