News stories by Kanya DAlmeida, page 4

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 05 (IPS) - For a while it went unnoticed: a boatload of migrants here, a vessel full of refugees there. But since 2012, the complex and unregulated movement of human beings through South and Southeast Asia– and the fate of those who put their lives in the hands of smugglers and at the mercy of the high seas – is becoming bleaker with each passing day.

NEW YORK, Jun 05 (IPS) - Imagine this, if you can: the world as we know it torn apart by ‘hypercanes', storms with wind speeds of over 500 mph, capable of producing a system the size of North America. A tiny fraction of humanity driven to a civilisation underground, the remaining masses left to fend for themselves on the virtually uninhabitable Earth's surface. Species extinction is complete and genetic engineering is at a new height, to ensure the continued survival of what's left of the human race.

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 05 (IPS) - As fighting drags on between Iraqi armed forces and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), millions of refugees caught between the warring groups are in dire need of humanitarian assistance.

NEW YORK, Jun 01 (IPS) - Children in prams held placards. Those unable to make it into the streets leaned out of high-rise apartment building windows, shouting support to the river of protestors below. For hours, several city blocks became a mass of red and blue, as scores of people waved the national flag of Puerto Rico. One name was on everyone's lips, but the cause was broader than a single man.

UNITED NATIONS, May 29 (IPS) - In many ways, Jayakumari Balendran epitomizes the plight of the Tamil people in Sri Lanka's northern and eastern provinces, both during and after the island nation's 26-year-long civil conflict.

UNITED NATIONS, May 16 (IPS) - On Thursday, May 14, a group of journalists rented a boat from Ko Lipe, a small island in Thailand's southwest Satun Province, and headed out into the Andaman Sea – a water body in the northeastern Indian Ocean bounded by Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Strait of Malacca.

UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (IPS) - Home to an estimated 3.74 billion people, the Asia-Pacific region holds over half the global population, determining to a great extent the level of economic stability, or chaos, in the world.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 29 (IPS) - With the four-week-long review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) underway at the United Nations, hopes and frustrations are running equally high, as a binding political agreement on the biggest threat to humanity hangs in the balance.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 27 (IPS) - The death toll has now passed 3,300, and there is no telling how much farther it will climb. Search and rescue operations in Nepal entered their third day Monday, as the government and international aid agencies scramble to cope with the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck this South Asian nation on Apr. 25.

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 (IPS) - Months after being denied access to Azerbaijan's places of detention, the head of the United Nation's Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) announced Friday that his four-member delegation had successfully conducted investigations of Azerbaijani prisons, police stations and investigative isolation units.