WASHINGTON, Jan 09 (IPS) - The U.S. government has released landmark new guidelines aimed at tackling overreliance on punitive disciplinary measures within the national school system, with students being expelled or even referred to law enforcement for minor infractions.

LIMA, Jan 09 (IPS) - A new institution set up in Peru will strengthen small-scale organic farming, providing support to some 43,000 exporters of ecological products and another 350,000 who supply the domestic market with environmentally-friendly products.

CHILANGA, Zambia, Jan 09 (IPS) - There are thousands of miles between Chanyanya Rural Health Clinic, a basic medical centre in Zambia's rural Kafue District with no resident doctors despite being the main centre for nearly 12,000 people, and the New York University (NYU) Teaching Hospital, one of the world's most prestigious medical schools.

PHNOM PENH, Jan 09 (IPS) - “Cambodian garment workers have two handcuffs and one weapon . One handcuff is a short-term contract . Even if they get sick, if they get pregnant they feel they have to get an abortion so they don’t lose their jobs.

CAIRO, Jan 09 (IPS) - A draft constitution set to go before a public referendum next week gives the military more privileges, enshrining its place as Egypt’s most powerful institution and placing it above the state.

WASHINGTON, Jan 09 (IPS) - Three years after the last U.S. combat soldiers left Iraq, the past week’s takeover of the western city of Fallujah by the Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has refocused Washington’s attention on a country that it had hoped to put permanently in its rear-view mirror.

BUENOS AIRES, Jan 08 (IPS) - The ratification as Argentina’s army chief of an officer accused of involvement in crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 dictatorship has revived the debate about the thin line between the moral and judicial responsibility of those let off the hook by an amnesty law for merely “following orders”.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 08 (IPS) - After nearly 13 years of protracted negotiations, the United Nations remains deadlocked on a proposal to establish a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) - even as suicide bombings continue unabated in countries such as Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, and most recently, Russia.

ATHENS, Jan 08 (IPS) - The start of Greece's six-month presidency of the EU was marked by a ceremony Wednesday in the Greek capital attended by the EU commissioners. But protests were banned and there was no talk about the raging controversy over the bloc's handling of the Greek debt crisis and the renewed concerns about the vitality of the Eurozone.

TUNIS, Jan 08 (IPS) - In the city of Metlaoui in the Governorate of Gafsa, a mining region in the parched south of Tunisia, the streets are dust, filled with ruts, the skin of the men in the cracked lanes leathery brown from the heavy weather.