WASHINGTON, Jan 13 (IPS) - With Haiti's Parliament possibly set to dissolve by Tuesday, civil society groups are worried that the Haitian president may move to unilaterally put in place a contentious revision to the country's decades-old mining law.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 12 (IPS) - An overwhelming majority of citizens in the 28-member European Union (EU) - which has been hamstrung by a spreading economic recession, a fall in oil prices and a decline of its common currency, the Euro - has expressed strong support for development cooperation and increased aid to developing nations.

ROME, Jan 12 (IPS) - It is sad to see how a continent that was one cradle of civilisation is running blindly into a trap, the trap of a holy war with Islam – and that six Muslim terrorists were sufficient to bring that about.

KINGSTOWN, Jan 12 (IPS) - For decades, the fertile slopes of La Soufriere volcano, which occupies the northern third of this 344-kilometre-square island, has produced illegally grown marijuana that fuels the local underground economy, and the trade in that illicit drug across the eastern Caribbean.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan 12 (IPS) - At 46, Naseema Nashad is starting her life over, not out of choice but out of necessity. The Afghan woman was just 25 years old when Taliban militants stormed Kabul and her family was forced to flee to neighbouring Pakistan to escape what they knew would be a brutal regime.

NEW DELHI, Jan 11 (IPS) - Three decades after 40 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide India Limited plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal on Dec. 3, 1984 – killing an estimated 4,000 almost instantly and maiming and blinding hundreds of thousands of others – the world's worst industrial disaster remains a sharp lesson on the need for greater safety regulations in Asia's third-largest economy.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon, Jan 10 (IPS) - "People get used to war. During the last battle, children were still coming to play. Can you imagine, a seven-year-old boy running through the bullets just to play video games," says Mohammad Darwish, a calm man with a curled beard framing his face.

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina, Jan 10 (IPS) - Globalisation is an integral feature of modernity. It already has significantly advanced to transform local experiences into global ones, to unify the disparate villages of the world into a global community, and to integrate national economies into an international economy.

NEW YORK, Jan 10 (IPS) - Since 1971, Maldives is one of only three countries that have graduated from the ranks of the world's "least developed countries" (LDCs) – the other two being Botswana and Cape Verde.

COLOMBO, Jan 09 (IPS) - When the initial results started trickling in a little after midnight on Jan. 9, it still wasn't clear exactly which way the country would swing: had Sri Lanka's 15 million eligible voters thrown in their lot with incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa for a third term? Or would the desire for change put common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena at the helm?