By Mel Frykberg

GAZA CITY, Jun 28 (IPS) - Mohammed Omer, the Gaza correspondent of IPS, and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza.
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By Binyamin Appelbaum

Globe Staff | June 27, 2008

The candidate endorsed subsidies for private entrepreneurs to build low-income units. But, while he garnered support from developers, many projects in his former district have fallen into disrepair.

CHICAGO - The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can’t afford to live anywhere else.
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Raphael Hoetmer - Interview with Boaventura de Sousa Santos

As Europe and Latin America’s leaders meet behind the “safety” of barricades and thousands of police during the Fifth Official Ministerial between the two regions, the National Engineering University is host to the Third Peoples’ Summit: Linking Alternatives. Activists from both regions convened to discuss alternatives to neoliberalism and a world that is more just, more democratic, and based on principles of solidarity. Portuguese activist researcher Boaventura de Sousa Santos was one of better-known participants. Raphael Hoetmer spoke with him during his stay in Lima.
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By Abid Aslam

WASHINGTON, Jun 26 (IPS) - The United States and other beneficiaries of foreign investment are seeking to restrict it, a leading U.S. think tank says in a report warning that this “protectionist drift” could roil capital markets and stifle global economic growth for years to come.
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By a Times Staff Writer

The South African hero, who now rarely comments on politics, breaks his silence to criticize the ‘tragic failure’ under Robert Mugabe

June 26, 2008 HARARE, ZIMBABWE — Former South African leader Nelson Mandela on Wednesday joined a growing chorus of African officials criticizing Zimbabwe’s leadership, further shaking longtime President Robert Mugabe’s grip on power.
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By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun (IPS) - On the eve of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, a bipartisan group of some 200 religious leaders and former top U.S. national security and military officers launched a campaign for a presidential order to outlaw torture and cruel and inhumane treatment of all detainees.
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ANSA

Hundreds arrive off coasts of Lampedusa, Sicily and Sardinia

(ANSA) - Lampedusa, June 25 - The summer wave of migrant landings continued on Wednesday when over 200 people landed on the southern shores of Sicily.
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Interview with Loughty Dube, Chair of the Media Institute of Southern Africa-Zimbabwe

BULAWAYO, Jun 24 (IPS) - For activists campaigning to put more women into Africa’s parliaments, the media has become a key battleground. All too often, female candidates are sidelined in election coverage, or reported on in a way that entrenches stereotypes of women rather than analysing the strength of their political and economic policies.
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Environmental News Network

There are now more than 11 million refugees worldwide, the United Nations refugee agency has warned as the world celebrates World Refugee Day.
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By Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail*

BAQUBA, Jun 24 (IPS) - Iraqis seem divided on who they would like to see as the next U.S. president, but few believe that either will end the occupation.
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Despite Russian and Serbian opposition, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said Friday the UN would gradually cede its role.

By Robert Marquand
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

June 23, 2008 edition
PRISTINA, KOSOVO - For 16 months, Russia and the West have been a bit eyeball-to-eyeball in the United Nations Security Council over the status of Kosovo. But to borrow Dean Rusk’s famous phrase during the 1963 Cuban missile crisis, it appears that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has just blinked.
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Interview with Mary Robinson, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights

GLASGOW, Jun 22 (IPS) - Mary Robinson spoke to Nastasya Tay of TerraViva/IPS about human rights today and the new campaign Every Human Has Rights, on the sidelines of the eighth CIVICUS World Assembly (Jun. 18-21).
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By Philip Stephens

The shortest distance in the discourse about climate change is that between denial and despair. The head wrested from the sand soon becomes the head in the hands. “Nothing needs doing” slides effortlessly into “nothing can be done”.
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By Joyce Mulama

GLASGOW, Jun 20 (IPS) - Progress that has already been achieved towards Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) may be reversed due to the current global food crisis, it is emerging at the eighth CIVICUS World Assembly.
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ANSA

Supreme court rejects appeal on Calipari case

(ANSA) - Rome, June 19 - An American soldier who shot and killed an Italian intelligence officer in Iraq in 2005 should not be tried in Italy which lacks jurisdiction in the case, the Italian Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
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Interview with abolition activist Sister Helen Prejean

WASHINGTON, Jun 18 (IPS) - For over 20 years, Sister Helen Prejean, a Roman Catholic nun, has worked to educate the public about the death penalty. She has been spiritual adviser to eight death row inmates, turning her experience visiting one into the best-selling book, “Dead Man Walking". In 1995, the book was made into a film starring Susan Sarandon, winning the actress an Oscar for her performance.
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Interview with Israeli academic Ilan Pappe

ATHENS, Jun 18 (IPS) - Support for an academic boycott of Israeli universities exposed Ilan Pappe to death threats last year, forced him to resign as senior lecturer of political science at the University of Haifa, and leave the country.
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Open Letter from President Evo Morales

Until the end of the Second World War, Europe was a continent of emigrants. Tens of millions of Europeans left for the Americas in order to colonize, escape famine, financial crises, wars and European totalitarianism and the persecution of ethnic minorities. Today, I’m following the process of the so-called “Returns Directive” with concern. The text, approved on June 5th by the Interior Ministers of the European Union’s 27 member countries, must be voted on in the European Parliament on June 18th. I feel that it drastically hardens the conditions for detention and expulsion of undocumented migrants, whatever their length of stay in the European countries, their work situation, their family ties, their will and their achievements at integration.
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By Mark Magnier
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Some of the change in the wake of the catastrophe may be short-lived, but some, such as the focus on the individual, outpourings of empathy, and an openness to foreign aid, appear lasting, analysts say.

June 17, 2008 -BEIJING — One month after a massive earthquake killed nearly 70,000 people, some of the effects of the crisis may hardly outlast the rubble, even as other seismic shifts irrevocably shake the Chinese government and society.
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By Bill Berkowitz*

OAKLAND, California, Jun 17 (IPS) - On Monday evening, with all the Bay Area local television stations and some of the national news networks on hand, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, two longtime gay rights activists, (re)married at City Hall in San Francisco, California.
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IRIN -humanitarian news and analysis

BANGKOK, 16 June 2008 (IRIN) - Six weeks after Cyclone Nargis battered Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Delta, scores of survivors are still without adequate protective emergency shelter and exposed to the heavy monsoon rains, adding to their risk of disease.
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By Vesna Peric Zimonjic

BELGRADE, Jun 16 (IPS) - After years of bloody chaos, instability and violence, the Balkans have turned into one of the safest areas in Europe, a United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) report says.
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IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

NAIROBI, 13 June 2008 (IRIN) - The presence of large quantities of ineffective or counterfeit anti-malarial drugs on the Kenyan market is hampering efforts to fight the disease, according to health officials.
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Interview with Ayman Okail of the Maat Centre for Juridical and Constitutional Studies

CAIRO, Jun 13 (IPS) - A death sentence in Egypt appears easy to receive – in fact there are 59 laws enabling judges to deprive a citizen of life, covering 105 crimes.

But the large number of death penalty laws and crimes they punish is not the sole problem, according to the Maat Centre for Juridical and Constitutional Studies in Cairo, a coalition of 22 human rights organisations and 200 personalities.
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Mark Weisbrot

Washington’s foreign policy establishment - and much of the U.S. media – was taken by surprise this week when President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, stated that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) should lay down their arms and unconditionally release all of their hostages. The FARC is a guerrilla group that has been fighting to overthrow the Colombian government for more than four decades.
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Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jun 12 (IPS) - Two key pledges made by the George W. Bush administration on military bases in its negotiations with the government of Iraq have now been revealed as carefully-worded ruses aimed at concealing U.S. negotiating aims from both U.S. citizens and Iraqis who would object to them if they were made clear.
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By Shailendra Singh

SUVA, Jun 12 (IPS) - Pacific Island governments should not view the global food crisis as a threat but as an opportunity to boost their neglected agricultural sectors, says a professor in development economics.

University of the South Pacific academic Biman Prasad says worldwide food shortages and the resulting soaring prices should serve as an impetus for greater investment in agriculture.
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By Michael McCarthy

The massive scale of environmental devastation across the continent has been fully revealed for the first time in an atlas compiled by UN geographers. Michael McCarthy reports

Wednesday, 11 June 2008

It was long shrouded in mystery, called “the Dark Continent” by Europeans in awe of its massive size and impenetrable depths. Then its wondrous natural riches were revealed to the world. Now a third image of Africa and its environment is being laid before us – one of destruction on a vast and disturbing scale.
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

NPR (National Public Radio)

June 10, 2008 · When Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first black president after the end of apartheid 14 years ago, he called his country a “rainbow nation.” But instead of becoming the ethnically integrated society he envisioned, South Africa today continues to battle racism.
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By Nergui Manalsuren

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 10 (IPS) - Despite the admirable progress made by some African countries in preventing and treating HIV/AIDS since 2000, 14 million Africans have died of AIDS in that time span, and an additional 17 million have been infected, says a new report on HIV/AIDS on the continent.
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Irene León

Feminism is plural, it has never responded to some single political line; it grew out of different situations, with variations inherent to each context. It has multiple political points of reference that converge on one common end: the struggle against patriarchy, a system which is not only ideological or cultural, but being based on maintaining power relationships, pervades all economic, political and social relations.
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Analysis by David Cronin

BRUSSELS, Jun 6 (IPS) - It is a safe bet that there will be no mass shedding of tears when U.S. President George W. Bush visits Slovenia to attend the final summit of his presidency between the European Union and the United States Jun. 10.
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ANSA

Judges differ on new immigrant rule

(ANSA) - Milan, June 6 - In the first two test cases Friday, Italian judges differed on the application of a new rule which would make criminal sentences longer for illegal immigrants.
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By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 6 (IPS) - New horizons opened up for transsexuals in Cuba with the approval of a Public Health Ministry resolution that establishes guidelines for their health care, including free gender reassignment operations.
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By Apostolis Fotiadis

TOMSK, Siberia, Jun 5 (IPS) - Ludmila Nikolovna, an ethnic Russian from Moldova, has no misgivings about her decision to come and study economics at Tomsk State University, even though she had to leave her two-month old daughter with her grandparents in Moscow.
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IRIN- humanitarian news and analysis

OUAGADOUGOU, 4 June 2008 (IRIN) - The Burkina Faso government has passed a new law that increases jail terms for traffickers from a maximum of five to 10 years, but child protection experts fear this will not stop child-trafficking, which the ministry of social welfare says is rising.
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By Nergui Manalsuren

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 (IPS) - Despite numerous international and regional treaties banning human trafficking, it remains a crime with low risks and high profits, said experts and diplomats at the first U.N. General Assembly open debate on the global slave trade Tuesday.
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By Rob Crilly

Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

The United Nations World Food Program meets Tuesday in Rome to discuss the global food crisis.

from the June 3, 2008 edition

Kerio Valley, Kenya - The hungry people of Kenya’s Kerio Valley had waited since dawn to be fed. They were not waiting for the thunder of aid trucks or the distant rumble of a cargo plane signaling a food drop.
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Greg Roberts
The Australian - June 03, 2008 .

PAPUA New Guinea is losing its accessible forests so quickly to logging and farming that more than 80 per cent will be gone within 13 years.

A five-year study by experts from the Australian National University and the University of Papua New Guinea Remote Sensing Centre has found PNG is losing 362,400ha of forest a year, equivalent to 1.4 per cent of its land area.
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Interview with political economist Susan George

FLORENCE, Jun 3 (IPS) - A global alliance of human rights activists, environmentalists and ethically run small enterprises is needed to save the planet from self-destruction, says Susan George, chair of the Planning Board of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. The institute works “to contribute to social justice.”
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ILO News

GENEVA (ILO News) – Some 4,000 industry leaders, policy-makers and experts from over 100 countries are to gather in Seoul, Republic of Korea, from 29 June to 2 July for the XVIII World Congress on Safety and Health at Work.
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Interview with Ali Mchumo, managing director of the Common Fund for Commodities

ROME, May 30 (IPS) - Biofuels are being criticised for contributing to the rise in commodity prices, but their energy potential can be developed too, on condition “that the poor are part of the production chain.”
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