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 WASHINGTON (IPS) — A nuclear-armed Iran would not pose a fundamental threat to the United States and its regional allies like Israel and the Gulf Arab monarchies, according to a new report released here Friday by the Rand Corporation.
Entitled “Iran After the Bomb: How Would a Nuclear-Armed Tehran Behave?&ldquo...

NEW DELHI (IPS) —  Harsh police handling of public protests erupting across India over a spate of sensational rapes since December has resulted in renewed demands to reform a force that retains the repressive features of its colonial origins.
Last month a bench of the Supreme Court, angered by police brutality on wome...

WASHINGTON — Despite renewed pressure by hawks in Congress and the media, U.S. President Barack Obama appears determined to avoid sharply escalating U.S. involvement in the ongoing civil war in Syria.
While administration officials insist that all options for responding to the recent alleged use by the Syrian military of c...

WASHINGTON — The administration of President Barack Obama should put more emphasis on diplomacy in its quest for a satisfactory resolution of Iran’s nuclear program, according to a major new report released by The Iran Project.
Endorsed by nearly three dozen former top U.S. diplomatic, military, and intelligence offi...

HAVANA  (IPS/GIN) — The life histories of Cuban women in prison for murdering their violent husbands or boyfriends show the need for reforms of the criminal code to take account of gender reasons as mitigating factors in sentencing.
Most (63 percent) of the nearly 4,000 Cuban women in prison are serving sentences for ...

HAVANA  (IPS/GIN) — Thousands of young Cubans are graduating in computer engineering, a sector the government decided to strengthen over the past decade. But their professional future is uncertain because of failures of organization and of internet connectivity.
“I haven’t been able to work as a computer e...

   WASHINGTON  (IPS/GIN) — While the U.S.-led sanctions regime on Iran has produced substantial economic hardship, analysts here are increasingly pointing out that Tehran’s controversial nuclear activities have continued unabated.
According to a study released recently by the National Iranian American ...

  BUENOS AIRES  (IPS/GIN)  — The selection of a Latin American pope, who is known for his austere lifestyle and his work with the poor, has created a stir among Catholics in the region, who are confident that Pope Francis will help bolster the Vatican’s tarnished reputation.
To the surprise eve...

CARACAS  (IPS/GIN) — Part of the legacy left by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who died Tuesday, was his determined struggle for the integration of Latin America independent of the standards and models of the industrialized North, and for the reinvigoration of left-wing radicalism in Latin America and the Caribbean...

TOKYO  (IPS/GIN) — Despite anti-discrimination laws and a steadily growing number of employed women, Japan is falling behind the rest of the world on gender equality. Widespread discrimination persists, and has only grown more subtle over the past years.
Japan is one of the world’s most industrialized countries ...

KABUL (IPS/GIN) — New textbooks, printed as part of an ambitious multi-million dollar exercise to reform the curriculum in Afghan public schools, have been found to contain glaring mistakes, adding yet another burden on a cash- and resource-strapped sector of this war-torn country.
The ministry of education forked out 91 m...

KABUL  (IPS/GIN) — Afghan women are no strangers to gender-based violence. For decades now, violent crimes against women have been heading for epic proportions, as young girls are forced into marriage, wives and daughters are abused, and women are dealt harsh punishments for ‘moral crimes’.
Now, officials ...

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank (IPS/GIN) — Thousands of Palestinians gathered throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip Thursday, including representatives of all the major political factions, to celebrate and to show their support for the Palestinian Authority’s bid for upgraded status at the United Nations.
“I&rs...

GEORGETOWN, Guyana  (IPS/GIN) — As regional delegates meet to discuss a legally binding ban on the use of mercury this week, Guyanese officials are arguing that an exception should be made for the South American country’s lucrative gold mining sector until an acceptable alternative is found.
Since world gold pri...

 DOHA  (IPS/GIN) — China’s ruling Communist Party has launched its national congress, a pivotal event that ushers in a new set of top leaders for the next decade.
More than 2,200 delegates gathered at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on Thursday for the start of the week-long session that will insta...

BUENOS AIRES (IPS/GIN) —Pediatricians and nutritionists stress that there is no single factor explaining why Argentina is the country in Latin America with the highest rate of obese and overweight children.
“In Argentina, between 2.5 and 3.0 percent of preschoolers were obese in the 1980s, compared to 10 perc...

MEXICO CITY  (IPS/GIN) — Juan Longueiro, 56, uses the bicycles of the Ecobici system three times a day, to commute to and from work and to exercise along the Paseo de la Reforma, a central Mexico City avenue.
“I think it’s a good service,” he told Tierramérica. “I use it in the morning a...

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts  (IPS/GIN) —Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas remembers how quiet — even uneventful — this tiny twin-island federation was for the first four decades of his life.
But over the past 10 years, St. Kitts and Nevis, as well as the rest of the Caribbean, have seen radical climatic shifts. ...

 DOHA(IPS/GIN)  — The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, has died from smoke inhalation in an attack on the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, the country’s interior ministry and security sources have said.
An armed mob attacked and set fire to the building in a protest again...

 UNITED NATIONS  (IPS/GIN) — When the 193-member General Assembly, the U.N.’s highest policy-making body, declared water and sanitation a basic human right back in July 2010, the adoption of that divisive resolution was hailed by many as a “historic” achievement.
But as the international communi...

RIO DE JANEIRO  (IPS/GIN) — A host of academic, legal, health, political and social figures are joining together to back a campaign to decriminalize drug use in Brazil, as tens of thousands of consumers uninvolved in the drug trade are currently jailed.
The “Drug Law: It’s Time to Change” campaign is...

 SANTIAGO  (IPS/GIN) — A new report takes a close look at the territorial distribution of poverty and inequality in Latin America, which has long had a reputation of being the most unequal region in the world. The Latin American Report on Poverty and Inequality 2011, presented this week by the Latin American Centre for ...

Syria: U.N. Chief says Syria has broken ceasefire

DOHA (IPS/GIN) — U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon the has called for a U.N. observer mission in Syria to be expanded, even though he says Damascus has failed to adhere to a ceasefire central to an agreed peace plan.
In a report to the U.N. ...

  CAPE TOWN, South Africa  (IPS/GIN) — Angola celebrated 10 years of peace on Apr. 4. Since the end of its 27-year- long civil war in 2002, the country’s economy has prospered thanks to oil. But experts fear that parliamentary elections later this year could return the country to violence and instability.
O...

UPPER NYONG DIVISION, Cameroon  (IPS/GIN) — Kokpa Pascale Moangue, a Baka Pygmy in southeastern Cameroon, has given his children the one thing he always longed for, but his parents could not give him — an education. And he was able to achieve it by obtaining a simple piece of paper: a birth registration certificate.