News headlines in 2013, page 44

LAHORE, Oct 08 (IPS) - Had the provincial governments of Pakistan heeded their apex court, the country's four provinces - Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa - would have had local governments in place by now. The Supreme Court of Pakistan had in July this year directed that local government elections be held by Sep. 15.

MEXICO CITY, Oct 08 (IPS) - The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the negotiation of which is set to conclude this year, could drive research into new drugs and improve access to medicines. Except – it won't.

WASHINGTON, Oct 07 (IPS) - Successful risk management can be a powerful tool for development, the World Bank said Monday in its annual World Development Report (WDR).

WASHINGTON, Oct 07 (IPS) - A new international convention opening for signatures this week will for the first time offer an agreed-upon roadmap by which to significantly decrease the global use of mercury while offering stronger safeguards for both human health and the environment.

PORT OF SPAIN, Oct 07 (IPS) - Trinidad's Orange Grove Savannah sits at the foothills of the Northern Range, whose watersheds provide copious volumes of fresh water into the aquifers - natural underground water storage areas - lying below these green spaces.

CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Oct 07 (IPS) - Malcolm Wallace always knew on which side his bread would be buttered.

ROME, Oct 07 (IPS) - "One of the fundamental contradictions is this: that whereas economic life has internationalism, or better still cosmopolitanism, as a necessary premise, state life has developed ever more in the direction of 'nationalism,' of 'self-sufficiency' and so on."

ADDIS ABABA, Oct 07 (IPS) - Datta Dudettu and his seven children know what is like to go hungry. They live in Woliyta, a drought-prone area in southern Ethiopia that has experienced chronic food shortages. But hopefully, thanks to the successful use of hybrid seed, that is now firmly in the past.

KARACHI, Pakistan, Oct 07 (IPS) - Twenty-eight-year-old Omar Zaib, a taxi driver in Lahore, capital of Pakistan's Punjab province, confessed in court last month to drowning his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter because he wanted a son. A few days later, the media reported that two newborn girls had been found abandoned at a railway station.

CAIRO, Oct 07 (IPS) - Bloody clashes erupted in Cairo on Sunday Oct. 6 between supporters of the military and followers of ousted elected president Mohamed Morsi as the latter protested against the July military coup that deposed their leader. But as clashes occurred on the streets, a clash of ideologies has been occurring on the country's 50-member committee as it amends Egypt's constitution.