News headlines in 2014, page 100

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, May 19 (IPS) - Minority communities in Pakistan have long had a raw deal. Accounting for just 10 percent of this country's population of 180 million, they are no strangers to marginalisation, discrimination or even violence.

JUBA, May 19 (IPS) - As with many conflicts and other humanitarian emergencies around the world, those who suffer the most are women, young girls and children. The current terrible crisis in South Sudan is no exception. 

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 (IPS) - The United Nations, which is trying to help resolve the widespread shortage of water in the developing world, is faced with a growing new problem: the use of water as a weapon of war in ongoing conflicts.

REYHANLI (TURKEY), May 19 (IPS) - As once-eliminated diseases resurface and barrel bombs and alleged chlorine attacks target civilians, doctors in rebel-held areas and across the border struggle with issues of how best to serve their profession.

UNITED NATIONS, May 19 (IPS) - Nearly 20 years ago, the world came together in Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women. There, 189 governments adopted a visionary roadmap for gender equality: the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 18 (IPS) - Conflicts with local communities over mining, oil and gas development are costing companies billions of dollars a year. One corporation alone reported a six billion dollar cost over a two-year period according to the first-ever peer-reviewed study on the cost of conflicts in the extractive sector.

TIL KOCER, Syria, May 18 (IPS) - "We all know that Ankara and Erbil have a joint plan to evacuate the entire region," Abdurrahman Hemo, head of the Kurdish Humanitarian Aid Committee tells IPS. "They want to choke the people here until they flee en masse."

WASHINGTON, May 17 (IPS) - The United States is not really a democracy. That's the (simplified) conclusion of a recent study from Princeton University. Instead, economic elites and special interest groups enjoy tremendous sway in Washington, while "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

NAIROBI/MOGADISHU, May 17 (IPS) - Twelve-year-old Halima Mohamed Ali wakes up every morning at five am, but unlike her peers she does not go to school. Instead, she begins her duties as a nanny for five children, the oldest of whom is just two years younger than she is.

WASHINGTON, May 16 (IPS) - China's massive urbanisation has been built, literally, by metal, supplied mostly by Latin American countries (LAC). Yet now China's slowing economic growth and falling commodity prices threaten Latin American commodity booms.