News headlines in 2014, page 132

GENEVA, Mar 14 (IPS) - Following the release Friday of his report to the Human Rights Council on the situation in Iran, U.N. Special Rapporteur Ahmed Shaheed urged Tehran to engage with U.N. mandates - firstly by permitting him to enter the country.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 14 (IPS) - The U.S.-Russian confrontation over Ukraine, which is threatening to undermine current bilateral talks on North Korea, Iran, Syria and Palestine, is also in danger of triggering a nuclear fallout.

BOUWER, Argentina, Mar 14 (IPS) - While the magnificent samba schools of Brazil were getting ready for the grand carnival in Rio de Janeiro, a modest carnival troupe toured a small Argentine town to draw attention to an urban problem that has brought the central province of Córdoba to the brink of environmental disaster: garbage.

SPOKANE, Washington, Mar 14 (IPS) - Beth Collins recently picked up and moved from Virginia to Colorado, but it wasn't for the typical reasons: new job, better schools, nicer weather. Collins' 14-year-old daughter, Jennifer, has intractable epilepsy. Medical cannibis eases her frequent seizures. But it's illegal in their home state.

BULAWAYO, Mar 14 (IPS) - She is only 17, but each morning is a reminder of her losses in life. As Pretty Nyathi* forces herself out of bed, feeds her baby, bundles him on her back and rushes to the market to buy vegetables to sell on the streets of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe she wishes her life were different.

KIEV, Mar 14 (IPS) - Crimea is facing a violent wave of human rights abuses, activists warn, with kidnappings of journalists and rights campaigners, harassment of non-Russian minorities and reports of growing persecution of anyone thought to be sympathising with the pro-European Kiev government.

SAN SALVADOR, Mar 13 (IPS) - The few tenths of a percentage between presidential candidates in the elections of Sunday Mar. 9 have been confirmed in the final vote tally, keeping the right in El Salvador in the opposition – and increasingly antagonistic toward the second consecutive government of the leftwing FMLN.

WASHINGTON, Mar 13 (IPS) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is wading strongly into the global debate over the impact of growing income inequality, offering a series of controversial findings that push back on long-held economic orthodoxy – of which the fund itself has long been a key proponent.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 13 (IPS) - As the protracted Syrian conflict enters its fourth year, there seems to be little or no hope of a resolution to the devastating crisis.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Mar 13 (IPS) - Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, says the promises of money by the "biggest polluters in the world" for small island developing states (SIDS) like his to adapt to climate change are a mostly a "mirage".