SAN JOSE, Mar 01 (IPS) - Over the last decade, Central America has managed to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels for the production of electric power, while expanding coverage. But the progress made by each country varies widely.

, Mar 01 (IPS) - Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy`s record second win at the Oscars for her short document ary A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness is proof that lightning can actually strike twice. Hardly four years ago, Chinoy was standing at the same stage in Los Angeles, accepting an Oscar for her documentary Saving Face, about Pakistani victims of acid attacks. Chinoy`s current Oscar winner examines a no less painful subject, honour killings in Pakistan.

DHAKA, Bangladesh, Mar 01 (IPS) - Pollinators, whose role is essential in a third of what the world eats, are at center stage after a landmark new United Nations report warned that many of the 20,000 species are threatened by human behaviour.

, Mar 01 (IPS) - There was yet another shocking headline in this daily (February 22): "Priest killed, devotee shot". Some "unknown" assailants raided a Hindu temple, slit the throat of a priest, and shot a devotee at Panchagarh in northern Bangladesh. This wasn't a random violent crime. Of late, there is nothing exceptional about premeditated attacks on minority communities or on people holding divergent views on religion and politics across the country.

MUTARE, Zimbabwe, Mar 01 (IPS) - Silindiwe Moyana, an HIV positive mother of five from Chipinge east of Zimbabwe, cannot hide her anxiety. She was worried she might not survive this year as drought-induced starvation stalks her and her family. The country is in the throes of a devastating drought which has compromised the nutrition of people living with HIV.

MADRID, Feb 29 (IPS) - Three years ago when the tsunami of panic around Iran's potential capability to develop nuclear weapons reached its peak, a combined diplomatic, media campaign warning that a Gulf Arab state would think of purchasing atomic bombs was spread like an oil spot.

ROME, Feb 29 (IPS) - Imagine a river bursting its banks and flooding entire cities and towns. But when the river is made of malodorous garbage and is in Beirut, this is a stark and dramatic situation affecting the city's 2.226 million people.

It all started in July 2015, when the Lebanese administration closed the major landfill of the city. Since then, trash is being piled all over the streets of Jdeideh in Beirut's northern suburbs. This river of garbage grew steadily, as reported in recent days by a wide section of news media, including Al Jazeera, CNN and Reuters. Thousands of kilometers away in Pakistan, a very similar situation is reported by Dawn.

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 29 (IPS) - The success of the UN's post-2015 development agenda is predicated on one underlying theme: no one should be left behind – and certainly not the world's rural poor --in the fight to eradicate hunger and poverty by 2030.

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 29 (IPS) - Nutrition is complex and multi-dimensional. Micronutrient deficiencies or ‘hidden hunger' are much more widespread than chronic undernourishment or hunger, understood as inadequate dietary energy. Micronutrient deficiencies refer to the lack of essential vitamins, minerals and other substances required over the human life cycle by the body in small amounts. Micronutrient undernutrition has long-term effects on health, learning ability and productivity, leading to high social and public costs, reduced work capacity in populations due to high rates of illness and disability, and loss of human potential.

NEW DELHI, Feb 29 (IPS) - India is the largest user of ground water in the world. But reliance of this overexploited resource has reached its limits in many parts of the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the drought-prone districts of Rayalseema, uplands of Prakasam, Krishna, East-West Godavari, parts of Nellore, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP). Forty per cent of the state's irrigation needs are met through groundwater. In the drought-prone Rayalseema region – which comprises Chittoor, Anantapur, Kurnool, Prakasam and Kadapa districts -- dependence on groundwater for irrigation is particularly high. The water crisis is also most severe in this region.