News stories by Judith Scherr

ILE À VACHE, Haiti, Aug 08 (IPS) - Calm waters lap the shore beneath stately coconut palms. Mango trees display their bounty alongside mangrove forests. Goats graze peacefully on hillsides.

BERKELEY, Apr 02 (IPS) - Mexico is fighting obesity and accompanying diseases with a one-peso per litre tax on sugar-sweetened beverages that kicked in Jan. 1. France implemented its "cola tax" in 2012. Several U.S. states tax sugar-sweetened beverages, including Vermont, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia and Virginia. Illinois legislators are considering such a tax.

BERKELEY, California, U.S., Nov 26 (IPS) - Just before midnight on Feb. 12, Kayla Xavier Moore's roommate dialed 911. Moore, 41, a paranoid schizophrenic, was off her prescription meds and highly agitated. The roommate thought he knew the drill – Moore would be taken to a psychiatric hospital, stabilised with medication and allowed to go home in 72 hours.

SAN FRANCISCO, Jul 02 (IPS) - Sporting wedding gowns, tuxedos, leather, beads, bangles, union t-shirts and Free Bradley Manning buttons – and some wearing just about nothing at all – some 1.5 million people poured into downtown San Francisco Sunday to celebrate lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender pride.

BERKELEY, California, Mar 28 (IPS) - Rodrigo Javier Diaz Guzman was a fairly typical Berkeley, California kid. He loved playing baseball and video games, enjoyed school and got good grades, watched Ninjago on TV, and ate take-out burritos and Chinese food whenever he could.

BERKELEY, California, Jan 31 (IPS) - Several dozen people filled the seats in a downtown storefront Tuesday night to plan how to save a landmark they say belongs to the community - a 99-year-old post office the United States Postal Service wants to sell.

OAKLAND, California, Dic 07 (IPS) - Better known as drones, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles piloted by military in the U.S. hunt and kill suspected enemy combatants abroad. Now the drones are coming home to beef up local law enforcement.

SAN FRANCISCO, U.S., Sep 18 (IPS) - Led by a spirited brass band and waving placards decrying corporate greed, hundreds of occupiers took to San Francisco streets Monday to celebrate Occupy Wall Street’s first birthday, culminating in a ceremony where they symbolically ripped apart loan documents.

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.

BERKELEY, California, Jul 13 (IPS) - Amber, 24, who’s been living on the streets half her life, was sitting on a sunny sidewalk in downtown Berkeley last week, cuddling her three-month-old puppy and talking to a friend. But if voters approve a measure the city council placed on the November ballot, sitting on the sidewalk – after a warning – could cost her 75 dollars.