By Bankole Thompson

DETROIT, Michigan, Sep 30 (IPS) - If the presidential election is close enough on Nov. 4, racism could hand the Republican nominee Sen. John McCain a victory, according to recent polls showing that Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama is having a hard time wining over older white Democrats because of his race.
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ANSA

Arrests include three suspects in African immigrant massacre

(ANSA) - Naples, September 30 - Italian police cracked down on the Camorra Tuesday in an operation Interior Minister Roberto Maroni described as ‘’a turning point'’ in the battle against the Neapolitan mafia.

‘’Today is a red letter day in the fight against the Camorra, a day to go down in the annals of crime fighting,'’ Maroni told a press conference.
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IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

COLOMBO, 26 September 2008 (IRIN) - The first convoy of food supplies for civilians since 16 September will travel under the UN flag with UN international staff to areas held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north next week, Neil Buhne, the UN Resident Representative in Sri Lanka, told IRIN.

The World Food Programme (WFP) convoy will be the first since UN and other international agencies working in areas held by the Tigers in the north-central region, known as the Vanni, relocated to government-controlled areas following a state directive amid deteriorating security.
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By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 29 (IPS) - As a spreading financial crisis threatens to deepen the economic recession in the United States, the news of an unprecedented 700-billion-dollar bailout package reverberated through the corridors of the United Nations last week as over 100 world leaders gathered in New York for the annual talk-fest: the 63rd session of the General Assembly.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah interviews ALEXANDER MILINKEVICH, opposition leader in Belarus

MINSK, Belarus, Sep 26 (IPS) - Opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich fears signs that the elections due in Belarus this Sunday will not be free and fair. President Alexander Lukashenko’s government continues to stifle the media, he says.

Milinkevich, founder of the Movement for Freedom, one of the strongest opposition parties in Belarus and a former presidential candidate, sees an increasing possibility of social and political tension, abuse of human rights and an escalating economic crisis.
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From The Economist print edition

Sep 25th 2008
No government bail-out of the banking system was ever going to be pretty. This one deserves support

SAVING the world is a thankless task. The only thing beyond dispute in the $700 billion plan of Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, and Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, to stem the financial crisis is that everyone can find something in it to dislike. The left accuses it of ripping off taxpayers to save Wall Street, the right damns it as socialism; economists disparage its technicalities, political scientists its sweeping powers. The administration gave ground to Congress, George Bush delivered a televised appeal and Barack Obama and John McCain suspended the presidential campaign. Even so, as The Economist went to press, the differences remained. There was a chance that Congress would say no.
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By Ida Karlsson

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 (IPS) - Even as Scandinavian leaders have assumed a prominent role in international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, both Norway and Denmark have failed to reduce their own emissions.

In Denmark, emissions of CO2 from road transport went have actually increased 36 percent since 1990, according to the National Environmental Research Institute. In Norway, emissions from greenhouse gases have never been higher, growing 3 percent last year alone, according to Statistics Norway.
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ANSA

Maroni says mafia immigrant massacre was act of terrorism

(ANSA) - Rome, September 24 - Naples Mafia the Camorra has declared ‘’civil war'’ on Italy, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said Wednesday. Speaking to the Senate about his decision on Tuesday to send up to 500 troops to help fight the Neapolitan Mafia in a bloody fief north of Naples following the worst ever Camorra massacre last week, Maroni said that the government had to ‘’respond with determination to take back the land'’.
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From Economist.com

Horticulture will change as the climate does

Sep 22nd 2008. GARDENS are more than just yard decorations for the green-thumbed: they also express a worldview. As concern over climate change grows, environmentally sensitive gardens are becoming more popular. Many gardeners try to conserve water and avoid the use of pesticides, preferring instead biological controls, manual removal and companion planting, in which certain plants are grown next to each other to protect both from pests or diseases. Commendable as these measures are, they are only a beginning.
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By Mario Osava

MANAUS, Brazil, Sep 24 (IPS) - Dhiani Pa’saro came to Manaus, the bustling city of 1.7 million people in the heart of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, eight years ago, after wandering from one village or town to another. At the time he planned to become a dentist, but at 33 he is now a renowned artist.
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Ramesh Jaura interviews HUGUETTE LABELLE, Chair of Transparency International

BERLIN, Sep 23 (IPS) - A new report by Transparency International (TI) lashes out at some of the world’s poorest countries for an “ongoing humanitarian disaster", and deplores the wealthiest for not doing enough to stem graft.
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Mark Weisbrot

“Battle in Seattle” opens September 19-26 in movie theaters across the country, a rare combination of high drama and history-making events as they actually happened when thousands of protesters shut down the World Trade Organization in Seattle nearly nine years ago. It has an all-star cast including Oscar-winning beauty Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Michelle Rodriguez, Ray Liotta, and Andre Benjamin (of Outkast hip-hop fame).
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By Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 22 (IPS) - The World Bank’s recent estimates on global poverty, particularly in relation to China, are being challenged by an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which monitors poverty eradication and gender equality.
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Richard Uku
guardian.co.uk,

Sub-Saharan Africa is increasingly short of electric power. Coal could provide a low-cost solution to the problem

Monday September 22 2008. Few infrastructure services in the developed world are taken for granted as much as electric power. To consumers in industrialised countries, uninterrupted power supply is a given. Not so in sub-Saharan Africa, which experiences some of the world’s greatest power deficits, and where only two in 10 people have access to electricity.
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By Tarjei Kidd Olsen

OSLO, Sep 19 (IPS) - Africa’s food crisis can be alleviated by modernising agriculture and reforming supply chains so that small-scale farmers get cheaper fertiliser and high-yield seeds, experts and officials at a conference in Oslo have argued. But so far, they say, funding is lacking.
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ANSA

Police suspect notorious Casalesi clan killed six

(ANSA) - Caserta, September 19 - Police on Friday said the notorious Casalesi clan of Naples’ Camorra Mafia was probably behind the murder of six immigrants in the small Campania town of Castelvolturno.

Three Ghanaians, two Liberians and a Togo national were shot dead on Thursday night at an ethnic clothing shop where local residents often brought clothes for minor adjustments.
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By Bankole Thompson

DETROIT, Michigan, Sep 16 (IPS) - Dr. Susan Rice, senior foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, says the U.S. would make every effort to avoid resorting to a military attack on Iran under an Obama administration.

Tough diplomacy would be used to curtail Iran’s reach for nuclear capability instead of rushing to war, she told IPS.
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Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero

The main argument of defenders of products derived from genetically modified organisms (GMO’s) is that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined in 1992 that they are safe and therefore need no further safety testing.
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Inter Press Service - IPS

LISBON, Sep 16 (IPS) - Pressure from the president of the European Commission has not succeeded in advancing the cause of transgenic crops. In spite of the power wielded by the executive organ of the European Union, the bloc’s member countries are gradually discontinuing the use of genetically modified seeds.

This is due in large measure to the difficulty of convincing European farmers to adopt the transgenic crop production model, which is being promoted by biotech giants, but also to increasingly vociferous protests from civil society, which is demanding that governments take an active role, according to an expert interviewed by IPS.
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By Jeff Israely

Coming to a stop in his two decade-old Fiat, Bologna social worker Claudio cut the ignition and yanked up the emergency break. “Get ready,” he said. It was January 2007, and as part of my reporting for an article on immigration I was about to meet some 15 Roma families who’d emigrated from the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s. Claudio’s warning was partly to prepare me for the rough conditions — rusting doors and walls, leaking pipes, power cuts — that I would encounter over the next hour as the longtime city caseworker showed me around the fenced-in cluster of aluminum trailers.
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Interview with Hausa novelist Sa’adatu Baba

KANO, Sep 6 (IPS) - While formal publishing companies in Nigeria languished through the economic crises that accompanied the structural adjustment programmes of the late 1980s and early 1990s, young Hausa writers began writing about their lives and contemporary problems they faced. Bypassing formal publishers, they self-published their novels, often with the help of a writers’ cooperative.
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IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

NAIROBI, 12 September 2008 (IRIN) - Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, warns in a new report that the gains made in reducing extreme poverty are under threat from the rise in global food and fuel prices and global economic slowdown.
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By Mark Weisenmiller

TAMPA, Florida, Sep 11 (IPS) - The two U.S. presidential candidates have both expressed support for the death penalty, but abolitionist activists are hoping that pragmatism and a swing to the Democrats in the state elections in November will inevitably edge the country along the road to total abolition whoever wins the presidency.
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Julian Borger, diplomatic editor

The Guardian, Thursday September 11 2008

Heroin addiction on rise, Tehran official warns
Britain points to decrease in land used for cultivation

Volume of opium-based drugs smuggled into Iran has risen fivefold, according to government.

Young Iranians are paying the price for Nato’s “failure” to curb opium production in neighbouring Afghanistan, according to the Iranian government.
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IRIN - humanitarian news and analysis

BISSAU, 8 September 2008 (IRIN) - When Aisha (not her real name) went into labour in Gabu, 160km east of the capital Bissau, she did not know she was pregnant with twins. The first delivery went smoothly, but she needed a Caesarean section for the second. But the doctor had bad news: the hospital’s generator was broken, so she needed to drive four hours to Bissau for her operation.
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By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 8 (IPS) - As greenhouse gas pollution destroys Arctic ecosystems, countries like Canada are spending millions not to halt the destruction but to exploit it.
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By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

A building boom is endangering some of the most precious flora and fauna in Europe, and sucking an already arid region dry.

September 8, 2008

TOLEDO, SPAIN — A frayed copy of “Don Quixote” was tucked under the front seat of Roberto Oliveros’ battered white truck as he sallied forth through the fast-changing plains of central Spain.
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Analysis by Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 8 (IPS) - When the United States and the former Soviet Union were on the verge of a military confrontation over Cuba during the height of the Cold War, the legendary U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson went eyeball-to-eyeball with Soviet envoy Valerian Zorin in the Security Council chamber.
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Deborah James

When the history of the seismic shifts occurring today in the global economy is written, the failure in July 2008 of corporate interests and some governments to expand the World Trade Organization (WTO) through the Doha Round will stand as a watershed moment.
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Interview with Barack Obama

DETROIT, Sep 3 (IPS) - Whether he wins or loses in the November election, Barack Obama will have made U.S. history as the first African American to lead a major political party.

In this Sep. 2, post-nomination exclusive interview with IPS correspondent Bankole Thompson, the Democratic presidential nominee defends his choice of Sen. Joe Biden as his vice president and answers wide-ranging questions, from the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the state of the economy to improving incomes and health care for all U.S. citizens.
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Interview with David Bonior, veteran Congressman and workers’ advocate

DETROIT, Sep 2 (IPS) - Michigan is a key state either presidential nominee needs to win the White House on Nov. 4. Unlike Democratic nominee Barack Obama, John McCain has carried Michigan before when he ran against President George Bush.
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Analysis by Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN, Aug (IPS) - Imagine the dawn of a day when development aid ministries in Europe are shut down because there are no countries left in the ‘South’ that depend on financial assistance from the ‘North’.

It sounds rather utopian. Nevertheless, more than 1,000 officials from ‘donor’ and developing countries and heads of multilateral and bilateral development agencies are looking to take collective ownership of that utopia when they gather in Accra next Tuesday for the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF3).
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