HAMBURG, Jan 20 2012 (IPS) – Shortly before midnight last Saturday, Alexander, a 24-year-old law student, stepped out of his small apartment in Hamburg and set off for a jaunt around the local supermarkets to pilfer their garbage containers.

Consumers in rich countries waste 222 million tonnes of food each year. Credit: Patrick Lentz/CC-BY-2.0

Alex, who did not want his family name to appear in the newspapers, dines almost exclusively on the food that other Ger…

NEW DELHI, Mar 1 2012 (IPS) – At the intensive care unit of the state-run All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) hospital in New Delhi, a two-year-old battered baby girl is fighting to survive.

The doctors attending to her have waged a six-week battle to keep her alive, but they are quickly losing hope that she will ever live a normal life after the torture she endured at such a tender age.

When she was first brought to the hospital by a 15-year-old sexual abuse victim, Baby Falak was almost dead and covered in bite marks, apparently inflicted by the young girl who brought her in.

In medical terms, Falak is suffering from battered baby syndrome, in which an infant sustains injuries as a result of physical abuse, usually inflicted by an adult caregiver.

TOKYO, Apr 9 2012 (IPS) – The discovery of radioactive contamination in ‘shiitake’ mushrooms grown in Manazuru town, Kanagawa prefecture, some 300 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, has raised public clamour for compensation.
Soon after the discovery, on Apr. 5, Kanagawa authorities directed farmers and organisations dealing with agricultural produce not to ship shiitake mushrooms, a delicacy prized for its nutritive and medicinal properties in East Asian countries.

Some of the Manazuru mushroom samples were found to have over 141 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kg, while samples taken from Murata, Miyagi Prefecture, showed cesium levels as high as 350 becquerels.

The discovery comes as residents of areas surrounding the Fukush…

Jeepney drivers and operators are using Eway54’s Ecodiesel made from used cooking oil. Credit: Kara Santos/IPS

MANILA, Jun 22 2012 (IPS) – For the past three months, a transport group in the Philippines has been making use of biodiesel processed from used cooking oil for their jeepneys.

Jeepneys, public transport vehicles originally made from U.S. military jeeps left over from World War II, are one of the most popular means of transport in the country.

Pasang Masda, a national association of jeepney drivers and operators, has partnered with EWay 54, a company dealing in the propagation and education of alternative fuels for the benefit of the environment.

<…

Fishermen dock their boats on a thin strip of sand at Kollam, in Kerala state of south India. Credit: Max Martin/IPS

NEW DELHI, Aug 3 2012 (IPS) – Far-flung South Asian communities, from the high Himalayan slopes to the Indian Ocean coasts, united in the face of extreme and uncertain weather, continue to hold on to the hope that the Rio+20 focus on disaster risk reduction (DRR) will positively influence national policies.

“There is hope in India, the biggest country in the region, that the final statement at the Rio+20 summit titled ‘The Future We Want’ gets translated into national policy before it is too late,” Vinod Chandra Menon, former member of India’s Na…

BELGRADE, Sep 27 2012 (IPS) – A popular Serbian proverb quips that when it comes to politics there are as many opinions as there are people in this central European country of seven million.

But the adage was turned on its head last week when the masses sent a strong collective message to the government: no nickel exploitation in the country.

The controversy began when mining minister Milan Bacevic announced earlier this month that Mokra Gora – a 10,813-square-kilometre state-protected national park – and other areas in central Serbia contain more than four million tonnes of nickel deposits.

Bacevic went on to inform the public that several international companies were interested in exploiting the metal, bringing into the country investments totalling 1.44 bi…

A packet of 1,000 colourful, empty capsules costs roughly 2.25 dollars and is freely available at major medicine markets in Karachi. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

KARACHI, Dec 14 2012 (IPS) – When 26-year-old Muhammad Qasim, a rickshaw driver from Lahore’s low-income Shahadra settlement, died last month, his family was shocked to learn that the cause of death was an overdose – of cough syrup.

On Nov. 23, shortly before going to bed, Qasim drank a whole bottle of , which he was in the habit of doing on a somewhat regular basis.

A little while later, his mother heard strangled noises coming from his bedroom and ran in to see him foaming at the mouth. He was rushed…

U.N. delegates listen to a high-level heads of agencies panel at the 57th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Credit: Lusha Chen/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2013 (IPS) – U.N. agency heads gathered Tuesday to reassert their unified commitment to ending the epidemic of violence against women and girls, and bringing justice and healing to survivors.

Grim statistics underscore the urgency of this issue: 70 percent of women worldwide report experiencing physical and/or sexual violence, 50 percent of reported sexual assaults are committed against girls under 16 years of age, and 603 million women live in countries where domestic violence has not been criminalised.<…

The EU logo for organic food, which became obligatory in 2009. Credit: Simon Leufstedt/cc by 2.0

WASHINGTON, Apr 24 2013 (IPS) – A decades-long push to require the labelling of foods containing genetically modified ingredients in the United States received a significant boost Wednesday, when bipartisan bills on the issue were simultaneously proposed in the House and Senate.

Advocates of such measures are reacting with excitement, noting that the new bills appear to be far better positioned than previous such attempts, in terms of both public and Congressional support. If the bills pass, the United States would join 64 other countries that have already put in place simil…

RIO DE JANEIRO, Jun 24 2013 (IPS) – Sexual violence against women is alarmingly under-reported and invisible in Brazil where, for example, there are no accurate, comparable data on rape in the country s 27 states.

We are on red alert, we are going to complain and demand changes from the authorities. We are also dissatisfied with the differential treatment given to victims from lower income classes, Eleuteria da Silva, the coordinator of (CAMTRA), a women s organisation in the state of Rio de Janeiro, told IPS.

In her view, national and state public policies for preventing and combating sexual crimes are ineffective, and measures to protect victims are equally inefficient.

The problem is both circumstantial and chronic. Policies do exist, but they are ineffectiv…