News stories by Farhana Haque Rahman

TORONTO, Canada, May 1 (IPS) - Press freedom is on the retreat across much of the world. As documented by recent global surveys authored by the UN and media institutes, the erosion of an independent, fearless and diversified press is a trend that has worsened for well over a decade.

TORONTO, Canada, December 22 (IPS) - Our traditional “year-ender” usually kicks off with a grim litany of world disasters and crises over the past 12 months, highlights IPS partners and contributors and culminates in a more positive-sounding finale. This time I’d like to begin on a more personal note intended also as a metaphor.

NEW YORK, May 02 (IPS) - World Press Freedom Day 2025 - Pressures on the press are piling up. Like an avalanche gaining speed yet unnoticed by most people in the valley below, freedom of the press is being relentlessly trampled over - despite the valiant efforts of a few.

TORONTO, Canada, Dec 23 (IPS) - Do you sometimes feel like a hamster on its wheel, or perhaps stuck on a runaway train hurtling towards the abyss? Whatever metaphor one might choose for our world looking back on 2024, rainbows don’t easily spring to mind.

NEW YORK, Nov 01 (IPS) - Standing high on the vertiginous edge of the future and looking down into a volcanic seething of approaching doom, it is a totally understandable desire to want to close your eyes, walk away and turn on the sports channel. If you have one.

ROME, May 01 (IPS) - Journalism is in crisis, again. The challenges to press freedom are enormous and multi-faceted and they are deepening -- in “free” and open societies as well as autocracies. And there are no simple solutions.

TORONTO, Canada, Dec 22 (IPS) - The year 2023 has brought so much tragedy, with incomprehensible loss of lives, whether from wars or devastating ‘natural’ disasters, while our planet has seen yet more records broken as our climate catastrophe worsens.

TORONTO, Canada, Nov 27 (IPS) - Another year and another UN climate change conference. As our ‘world leaders’ prepare for two air-conditioned weeks of wrangling at COP28 in Dubai later this month, forgive us for sounding underwhelmed, despairing, and even cynical about these annual jamborees where actions rarely match promises.

TORONTO, Canada, Apr 30 (IPS) - Peak oil was first up, followed by peak gas, gold and others, as if the world was draining natural resources like toilet roll panic buying in a lockdown supermarket. But should we now be worried about Peak Press?

TORONTO, Canada, Dec 23 (IPS) - A year that started with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is ending with famine in Africa, while still spreading death and misery through an enduring pandemic and a deteriorating climate crisis -- 2022 has been an apocalyptic warning of the frailty of our planet and the woeful shortcomings of humankind.