News headlines in 2015, page 98

ROME, Mar 19 (IPS) - For a  long time, citizens of the United States have firmly believed that their country has an exceptional destiny, and continue to do so today even though their political system has become totally dysfunctional.

SENDAI, Japan, Mar 19 (IPS) - The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) announced a new 10-year global plan to support country efforts to reduce the risk of disasters that kill people and destroy livelihoods at the Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction from Mar. 14 to 18.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 (IPS) - Speaking from the United Nations Headquarters in New York on Wednesday, the U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, defined 2015 as the year to end violations of the rights of the children worldwide.

NEW DELHI, Mar 19 (IPS) - In November last year, India's power minister Piyush Goyal announced that he plans to double coal production in India by the end of this decade and, in an effort to enhance production, the Indian government has started a process of auctioning coal blocks.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 (IPS) - The growing economic inequalities between rich and poor – and the lopsided concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the world's one percent - are undermining international efforts to fight global poverty, environmental degradation and social injustice, according to a civil society alliance.

NEW YORK, Mar 19 (IPS) - There's little argument about the basic facts: It's ugly (think strip malls and big box stores). It's not very convenient (hours spent behind the wheel to get to work). And it wreaks havoc on the natural environment (lost farmland and compromised watersheds).

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 18 (IPS) - Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi has called for globalised human compassion to combat the global and persistent problems of child labour and child slavery.

ZARANJ, Afghanistan, Mar 18 (IPS) - Balochistan, divided by the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, is a vast swathe of land the size of France. It boasts enormous deposits of gas, gold and copper, untapped sources of oil and uranium, as well as a thousand kilometres of coastline near the entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.

SENDAI, Japan, Mar 18 (IPS) - The Third World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction concluded on Wednesday after a long drawn-out round of final negotiations, with representatives of 187 U.N. member states finally agreeing on what is being described as a far-reaching new framework for the next 15 years: 2015-2030.

SAN JOSE, Mar 18 (IPS) - A strike that has brought activity to a halt since January on three major banana plantations on Costa Rica's southern Caribbean coast, along the border with Panama, has highlighted the abuses in a sector in the hands of transnational corporations and has forced the governments of both countries to intervene.