News stories by IPS Correspondents, page 4

MEXICO CITY, Aug 23 (IPS) - Two years after the massacre of 72 migrants in Mexico, shelters for undocumented migrants are facing challenges and threats, due to the rise in the number of people seeking assistance, the lack of solidarity on the part of local communities, pressure from organised crime, and a lack of adequate public policies addressing the problem of migration.

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 22 (IPS) - Scientific uncertainty about the health impacts of electromagnetic fields is fueling worries among people in the Argentine capital who are demanding that energy power transformers be located far from their neighborhoods.

BUNDELKHAND, India, Aug 21 (IPS) - Narrow, cobblestoned lanes separate the rows of mud houses with cool interiors and mud-smoothened patios, some with goats tethered to the wooden posts. This is Tajpura village, deep in this water-stressed, drought-prone region of northern India.

WASHINGTON, Aug 21 (IPS) - Deportation is a devastating experience for a family, breaking it apart and leading to emotional and mental stress for its members. But a new report from the Centre for American Progress shows that such duress extends beyond families and into the larger community as a whole.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Aug 20 (IPS) - For the past five years Sharifullah Shah, a local doctor from the conflict-ridden North Waziristan province in Pakistan, has handed over 500 dollars to the Taliban during the month of Ramadan. But this year, he is putting his money straight into the Edhi Welfare Centre, where he knows it will reach those in need.

MBUJI MAYI, DR Congo, Aug 20 (IPS) - Mechanisation was expected to transform agriculture in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s central province of East Kasaï. But a project to offer tractors for ploughing land has fallen flat. Meanwhile, many households don’t have enough to eat because agricultural production in this mineral-rich province is too low.

BRATISLAVA, Aug 19 (IPS) - Slovak doctors have launched an unprecedented campaign to rid their own profession of what is widely perceived as endemic bribery.

WASHINGTON, Aug 17 (IPS) - The U.S. State Department released a statement Friday urging the Bahraini government to reconsider a ruling that sentenced the director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab, to a three-year jail term for organising opposition rallies.

OAKLAND, California, Aug 16 (IPS) - Haiti’s brutal army was disbanded in 1995, yet armed and uniformed paramilitaries, with no government affiliation, occupy former army bases today.

PIENDAMÓ, Colombia, Aug 16 (IPS) - Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos travelled to a native reserve in the southwest of the country Wednesday to meet with thousands of indigenous people who had gathered there for nearly a week, demanding an end to fighting in their territory.