News stories by Carey L. Biron, page 13

WASHINGTON, Aug 19 (IPS) - Anti-poverty campaigners are celebrating the Norwegian government's release of an external audit of all outstanding public debts it is owed by developing countries, the first time any country has undertaken such a process.

WASHINGTON, Aug 17 (IPS) - The U.S. Department of Energy has announced it is accepting a petition from a conservative advocacy group critical of a recent substantial increase to official calculations of the so-called "social cost of carbon".

WASHINGTON, Aug 15 (IPS) - The U.S. secretary of defence has unveiled a series of new directives aimed at cracking down on an epidemic of sexual assaults in the armed forces, an issue that has seized the very top levels of the military brass in recent months.

WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (IPS) - Major U.S. retailers are selling garden plants that are billed as "bee-friendly" but laced with pesticides known to be toxic to bees, according to a preliminary study, the first on the issue, released Wednesday.

WASHINGTON, Aug 12 (IPS) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has directed the Justice Department to institute a slew of major reforms to federal charging policies that have long required automatic prison time for even minor drug offences.

WASHINGTON, Jul 26 (IPS) - Even as policymakers around the world wrestle with how to cut future emissions of global greenhouse gases, some scientists and environmentalists are increasingly turning their attention to the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere, trying to discern ways that this level can be efficiently and safely brought down.

WASHINGTON, Jul 24 (IPS) - A U.S. federal judge has upheld a key regulatory provision aimed at ensuring that the profits from products mined in central Africa are not used to benefit armed groups, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - As a mass hunger strike in the California prison system enters its third week, advocacy groups are warning that prison officials attempting to break the strike are breaching international human rights standards.

WASHINGTON, Jul 23 (IPS) - The World Bank is being urged to explicitly incorporate human rights into its development lending criteria, ahead of an important discussion on the subject by its executive board on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, Jul 18 (IPS) - A broad spectrum of interests are urging U.S. lawmakers to extend a law offering trade preferences to developing countries, slated to expire at the end of the month.