MANILA, Sep 07 (IPS) - Being part of a platform where leprosy-affected people from all over the world can freely interact, exchange and share opinions, ideas, experiences and strategies was always something Tasfaye Tadesse dreamt of.

BULAWAY, Zimbabwe, Sep 07 (IPS) - Former Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe, who died this week, aged 95, leaves a mixed and divisive legacy.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 07 (IPS) - Forest fires, droughts and other forms of land degradation cost the global economy as much as 15 trillion dollars every year and are deepening the climate change crisis, a top United Nations environment official said Friday.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 06 (IPS) - With the rapid leap in digital technology – including increased access to conference calls, e-translations, skype, text messaging and emails—more and more offices in the United States are providing employees with an option to "work from home".

GENEVA, Sep 05 (IPS) - Following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on American soil, the United States and their allies went to Afghanistan to "smoke out" Osama bin Laden and his Taliban protectors. The most fundamental primary mistake was to let all terrorists flee to Pakistan instead of sealing the border and capturing their main figures.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 05 (IPS) - The United Nations will be hosting six high level plenary meetings –- unprecedented even by its own standards—during the beginning of the 74th session of the General Assembly in late September.

ROME, Sep 05 (IPS) - In an inaugural lecture at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, Amartya Sen began with a swipe at Queen Victoria who complained to Sir Theodore Martin in 1870 about "this mad, wicked folly of 'Woman's Rights'", as in her rarefied world nobody could trample upon her rights. The world has of course changed dramatically and women's rights are widely acknowledged but injustices persist.

Our concern here is with health injustices that are widely prevalent in India. These take multiple forms: female foeticide, widespread morbidity and denial of access to good quality healthcare until a critical condition develops. Our focus here is on vulnerability of women to non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and their limited access to good quality healthcare in India.

STOCKHOLM / ROME, Sep 04 (IPS) - Some world leaders try to prove their alpha male status by presenting attractive and submissive wives as tokens won in virile scrambles with other potent stags.

A recent example of such puerile machismo was exposed in a twitter battle between the Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and his French equivalent Emmanuel Macron.

Since taking office in January, Mr Bolsonaro has railed against what he considered to be foreign meddling in Brazilian environmental politics. Wild fires raging in the Amazonian rain forest have generally been blamed on a rampant deforestation said to be endorsed by Bolsonaro´s regime.

NEW DELHI, Sep 04 (IPS) - Expectation are high, perhaps too high, as the 14th Conference of the Parties (CoP 14) of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) now into the third day of its two-week session being held outside the smog-filled Indian capital of New Delhi.

ACCRA, Ghana/ELDORET TOWN, Kenya, Sep 04 (IPS) - Viola Kiptanui, a resident of Langas estate in the outskirts of Kenya's Eldoret town, has discovered a new way of life – eating only what she knows the source – thanks to a new smallholder entrepreneurship venture.