, Jun 17 (IPS) - While South Sudan's President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar agreed last week to end the country's devastating six-month conflict by forming a transitional government within the next two months, it may come too late for this country's wildlife as conservation officials accuse fighters on both sides of engaging in killing wild animals to feed their forces.  

, Jun 17 (IPS) - The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to reject an appeal by the Argentine government will embolden aggressive "holdout" creditors, anti-poverty groups say, and make it far more difficult to arrive at debt-relief agreements for poor countries.

PORT VILA, Jun 16 (IPS) - In the Pacific Island state of Vanuatu, 23 actors with disabilities, from youth to senior citizens, who have battled physical and social barriers all their lives, are now empowering themselves and others through socially engaged theatre.

MEJILLONES, Chile, Jun 16 (IPS) - In April 2004, Argentina began to steadily cut natural gas exports to neighbouring Chile, triggering a major energy crisis and revealing structural problems in this vital sector.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 (IPS) - Holy men and their holy books have etched a trail of tears and blood in the annals of human history. From the depths of peaceful temples, mobs have been dispatched with flaming torches; from steeples and minarets messages of hatred have floated down upon pious heads bent in prayer. For too long religion has incited violence and fueled conflict.

ANKARA, Jun 16 (IPS) - Eighteen months after a ceasefire between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and Turkey's security forces took effect, clouds of trouble are gathering in the country's south-east.

HELSINKI, Jun 16 (IPS) - Germany has now become the world's first modern renewable energy economy, according to the experts. The Federal Republic of Germany already obtains 29 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, meaning photovoltaic, hydro and wind power, and power produced by burning wood or other biomass.

KHAZAR, Iraq, Jun 15 (IPS) - "People with long beards and dressed like Afghans broke into our neighbourhood after they had bombed it. We were lucky to escape from that nightmare," Aum Ahmad, a46-year-old woman from Mosul – 400 km northwest of Baghdad – told IPS from the recently set up Khazar refugee camp, 25 km east of the besieged city.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Jun 15 (IPS) - A freak storm, followed by heavy floods in December 2013, will go down in history as the most destructive natural disaster to have hit the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with reported total damages and losses of at least 103 million dollars.

MANILA, Jun 14 (IPS) - Amid simmering territorial conflicts across the Western Pacific, specifically between China and its neighbours in the South and East China Seas, coupled with China rising to the rank of top trading partner with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Obama administration has been hard-pressed to re-assert its strategic footprint in the region.