News headlines in March 2017, page 2

IBADAN, Nigeria, Mar 29 (IPS) - The role of genetic engineering in agriculture and food has generated enormous interest and controversies, with large-scale embrace by some nations and wholesale bans by others.

OTTAWA, Mar 29 (IPS) - I have two children. A daughter who just turned six and a son who just turned three. My daughter was late to walk. My husband and I were pretty worried about why it was taking so long for her to stop ‘bum scooching' — her preferred method of movement. I consulted Google on more than one occasion to see if other parents had children doing the same. I felt anxious when I read that 18 months was considered very late. She didn't start until she was 22 months after a few months of physiotherapy.

US / MEXICO BORDER, Mar 29 (IPS) - The sight of one of the most infamous borders on earth – roughly 1,000 kilometers of porous metal fence dividing lives, hopes and dreams between the USA and Mexico, is undoubtedly overwhelming, but not in the way we expected it to be.

RATNAPURA, Sri Lanka, Mar 28 (IPS) - As the mercury rises higher, Kamakandalagi Leelavathi delves deeper into the lush green mass of the tea bushes. The past few afternoons there have been thunderstorms. So the 55-year-old tea picker in Uda Houpe tea garden of Sri Lanka's Hatton region is rushing to complete her day's task before the rain comes: harvesting 22 kgs of tea leaves.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 28 (IPS) - As the devastating civil war in Syria entered its seventh year last week, President Bashar al-Assad has continued to survive--- despite faltering efforts by the United States and the UN Security Council (UNSC) to rein him in, or impose sanctions on his beleaguered regime.

CIENEGUITA, Costa Rica, Mar 28 (IPS) - Two years have gone by since the new government initiative which subsidises community works changed the face with which the coastal town of Cienaguita, on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, looks out to the sea.

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Mar 28 (IPS) - The Caribbean Drought & Precipitation Monitoring Network (CDPMN) is warning countries in the region that the same abnormal climate conditions they have experienced over the last few years, which resulted in some of the worst drought in two decades, could continue this year.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 27 (IPS) - A top UN human rights group has decided to investigate human rights abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.

ROME/CAIRO, Mar 27 (IPS) - Food security and nutrition levels in the Near East and North Africa have sharply deteriorated over the last five years, undermining the steady improvement achieved before 2010 when the prevalence of undernourishment, stunting, anaemia and poverty were decreasing, a new UN report warns.

ROME, Mar 27 (IPS) - For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, one of the darkest chapters in human history. Slavery is, nevertheless, far from being just a chapter of the past—it still there, with estimated 21 million victims of forced labour and extreme exploitation around the world--nearly the equivalent to of the combined population of Scandinavian countries.