News headlines in 2013, page 91

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - As a mass hunger strike in the California prison system enters its third week, advocacy groups are warning that prison officials attempting to break the strike are breaching international human rights standards.

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - There is a real opportunity for peacemaking between Israel and the Palestinians, even though the obstacles are more formidable than in the past. That was the assessment of former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, speaking Monday at a public event which posed the question "Can the Two-State Solution Be Saved?"

HARARE, Jul 23 (IPS) - Moses Chiengerere is one of the Zimbabwe's hundreds of thousands of smallholder maize farmers keeping this southern African nation's granaries stocked with the grain.

KAMPALA, Jul 23 (IPS) - It is 10.26 am in Kampala and a Ugandan woman is airing her gripe about the opposite sex on the airwaves.

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - The successful campaign of Iran's President-elect Hassan Rouhani may have been built on the persistence of hope among Iranian voters for a better future.

HAVANA, Jul 23 (IPS) - "The basic objective of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) is people's welfare, and I think that in this we have many affinities with what the Cuban government wants," Regula Bäbler told IPS.

ROME, Jul 23 (IPS) - "It was midnight and I was sleeping; I woke up to the noise of the police breaking down the entrance door of the school," says Italian journalist Lorenzo Guadagnucci. "They came in running and screaming. The bashing was immediate, with no chance of mediation."

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - The World Bank is being urged to explicitly incorporate human rights into its development lending criteria, ahead of an important discussion on the subject by its executive board on Tuesday.

CARACAS, Jul 22 (IPS) - Microfinance is essentially social, but its expansion and evolution towards diversified financial services for those who are excluded from the conventional system has compelled it to develop new codes and practices to reinforce the message that its goal is people - particularly the poor.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 22 (IPS) - With a propensity to devour everything in their path and spiral quickly out of control, leaving behind swathes of scorched earth, forest fires are considered a hazard in most parts of the world. In Indonesia, however, fires are the preferred method for clearing large areas of land for massive plantations of commercial crops.