Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani

CAIRO, Jan 8 2009 (IPS) – Egyptian authorities have almost fully sealed the border with Gaza, preventing delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid.
The government has expressly forbidden the entry of aid convoys laden with food into the Gaza Strip, Emmad al-Din Moustafa, member of the Popular Committee for Aiding Gaza told IPS. The continued border closure like the Israeli assault itself constitutes a crime against humanity.

Israel began a series of devastating air strikes on targets throughout the Gaza Strip Dec. 27, followed by a ground offensive launched Jan. 3. According to Israeli officials, the campaign, which has included thousands of air strikes and naval bombardment, comes in retaliation for rockets fired at Isr…

Ashfaq Yusufzai

PESHAWAR, Feb 19 2009 (IPS) – The battle to eradicate polio in Pakistan has become more complicated.
The government has pinned responsibility on the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the sudden spread of the P3 virus in northwestern Pakistan and the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan since 2008.

The WHO stopped the P3 vaccination causing a rise in cases in 2008, says Dr Mohammad Ali Chauhan, who is in charge of the polio eradication campaign in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Thirty three of the 52 cases of polio (in the province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas FATA) were of the P3 virus last year.

Since January, four new cases have been reported from Charsadda and other parts of the NWFP. Last week, a special campaign agai…

Esther Tola

COTONOU, Mar 28 2009 (IPS) – Judges and gynaecologists in Benin have undergone training on the interpretation of forensic evidence in cases of violence against women, as well as in investigative procedures when dealing with rape cases.
The training took place in Cotonou, the country s economic capital, at an international conference held Mar. 16 to 19 as part of the Women s Justice and Empowerment Initiative, a U.S. government-funded programme to strengthen awareness of gender-based violence and prosecution of perpetrators in four African countries.

In Benin, this initiative is being carried out by Care International and its Empower project, working to enhance the ability of local and national bodies to address the needs of women affected by violence.

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Pilirani Semu-Banda

LILONGWE, Apr 29 2009 (IPS) – An influential women rights organisation in Malawi, Women in Law in Southern Africa-Malawi (WILSA-Malawi), is suing the government of Malawi for preventing women from accessing safe abortion.
Malawian law prohibits abortion Section 149 of the country s penal code says any person who administers abortion shall be liable to imprisonment for 14 years, while Section 150 indicates that any woman who solicits abortion is liable to seven years imprisonment.

But WILSA-Malawi s executive director, Seodi White, calls the existing laws nonsensical because they infringe on women s rights. She says they force women to seek back-street abortions from traditional healers and illegal clinics thereby putting their lives in danger.

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OAKLAND, California, May 28 2009 (IPS) – She s a politically savvy history student at the University of California, Los Angeles who is appearing on countless conservative talk radio programmes and cable television news shows.
She was given the 2008 Person of the Year Malachi Award, by the longtime anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and received a 50,000-dollar grant from an anti-abortion philanthropist.

On her campus, she is campaigning to urge the administration to cut ties with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a national provider of sexual and reproductive health services.

Meet Lila Rose, 20, the president of Live Action Films, and the new face of the anti-abortion movement.

Rose s emergence onto the national stage comes at a time when Presiden…

Matthew Cardinale

ATLANTA, Jul 31 2009 (IPS) – As more and more states are turning against coal power facilities in the U.S., advocates have been using the legal system to halt new pending plants.
In Georgia, a major case is testing the implications of the 2007 ruling by the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.

Two subsequent rulings by a Fulton County Superior Court Judge and the Court of Appeals in Georgia have so far each held up a new plant, Longleaf Energy Station, sought in Georgia s Early County by LS Power of New Jersey.

If approved, the plant would be the first new coal power plant in Georgia in at least 20 years and one of the only ones opened in the U.S. during the same period, …

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 22 2009 (IPS) – Keeping a hospital appointment in the Argentine capital is a far less fearsome ordeal for transgender persons, a sector of the population that according to doctors had dramatic statistics of illness, when they are accompanied by trained health promoters who, like them, have chosen a different gender identity.
It s easier to communicate among ourselves than with hospital staff, Valeria Ramírez, a transgender promoter with the city of Buenos Aires Programme to Facilitate Access to the Health System for the Transgender Population, told IPS.

In place since 2007, the strategy has increased the frequency of consultation and health check-ups by this marginalised community, as well as boosting the immune systems of those inf…

Helen Clark

HANOI, Sep 29 2009 (IPS) – At a tra da (iced tea) stand in Hanoi s Truc Bach area, men in baggy white singlets sit on low plastic stools drinking strong green tea poured from a chipped porcelain tea pot.
A hissing squeal cuts over the revving of a motorbike one street down as one of the men pulls smoke through his thouc lao , a traditional bamboo water pipe. It is popular mainly with older men and farmers, not the city s trendy youth.

The stall owner sells bags of rough tobacco for 2,000 Vietnam dong or less than 10 U.S. cents.

In Vietnamese tobacco is called thouc la , which means medicinal leaves . Given a reported 40,000 die each year from lung cancer, it is not the most apposite name.

Huong who only gave one name has been smoking more t…

Charles Mpaka

LILONGWE, Oct 9 2009 (IPS) – It was, Malawian police say, a routine sweep for criminals at one of the country s busiest border posts. They were looking for criminals.

A Malawian sex worker who says she was forced by police to undergo an HIV test. Credit: Charles Mpaka

But when police arrested 14 prostitutes as part of their search, and then allegedly forcefully tested them for HIV and charged them for deliberately trading in sex while having a sexually…

Sabina Zaccaro

ROME, Nov 16 2009 (IPS) – World farmers are not part of the official delegations at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food summit on food security that opened here Monday. But they came anyhow to express their views, since, they say, it is their communities that are most impacted by the food crisis.

Hortense Kinkodila of La Via Campesina in Congo Brazaville. Credit: Sabina Zaccaro/IPS

Small-scale producers from the Amazonian rainforest, from Africa, the Pacific islands and th…