News stories by Pavol Stracancsky

VIENNA, Mar 01 (IPS) - The fifth global forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilisations (UNAOC), founded to promote intercultural understanding and dialogue to bring civilisations closer, came to a close Thursday after two days of talks, at which world leaders restated their commitment to the Alliance's ideals and pledged to build on the foundations it had laid to expand its work.

KOSICE, Slovakia, Feb 23 (IPS) - Local activists have begun protests in Slovakia after a government ministry appeared to give its backing to a controversial uranium mining project despite reassurances to people living near the proposed site that no mining would be allowed to take place.

WARSAW, Nov 26 (IPS) - When the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which advocates an end to what it says has been a failed ‘war on drugs', held its latest working meeting in Warsaw last month, the choice of venue was apt.

PRAGUE, Sep 15 (IPS) - The Czech foreign ministry has insisted the country’s support for human rights is “not for sale” after calls from the prime minister to drop “fashionable political causes” such as supporting the Dalia Lama and the jailed Russian pop group Pussy Riot.

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

BRATISLAVA, Jun 19 (IPS) - Rights groups have called on governments in Central and Eastern Europe to publicly condemn violence against Roma, as a family was gunned down in Slovakia in the latest example of what monitors say is a rising tide of violence against Europe’s largest ethnic minority.

Poland’s pension cuts on tens of thousands of former communist functionaries and secret police officers are adding fillip to campaigns in other East European states for similar legislation.