Sylvestre Tetchiada

YAOUNDE, Jun 13 2006 (IPS) – Josiane Matia, making her way along a school route in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé, is far less carefree than other 11-year-olds. Walking slowly, she complains of the pain caused by a breast band that her mother has forced her to wear for three months.
Before this breast band, my mother used the grinding stone heated in the fire to massage my chest, she told IPS.

Every night my mother examines my chest (and) massages me, sometimes with the pestle, Matia adds. All this is in a bid to reverse the development of the girl s breasts, to prevent her becoming the object of male attention.

Although I cry hard because of the pain, she tells me: Endure, my daughter; you are young and there is no point in having …

Marina Kozlova – Asia Water Wire*

NUKUS, Jul 26 2006 (IPS) – Until about 15 years ago, very little was known about the Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea, except that it was a top-secret testing site for Soviet biological weapons.
Today, the island which has now turned into a peninsula following the drying up of the Aral has become a public health time bomb because of germ residues that scientists say could still be lingering there.

Vozrozhdeniye is a time bomb (in the Aral Sea region) that could cause serious problems in the future, says Gappar Asenov, head of the zoological and parasitological laboratory at the Karakalpakstan Centre for Prophylaxis of Quarantinable and Most Hazardous Infections.

The former Soviet Union first tested biological weapons at V…

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Sep 1 2006 (IPS) – Despite years of opposition mounted by a determined network of environmentalists and citizen groups, a new paper pulp plant began to operate Thursday in Chile.
The factory is operated by Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (CELCO), a Chilean firm notorious for the ecological disaster it is blamed for in a wetlands system near another of its plants, where hundreds of black-necked swans died off.

In Chile, political decisions continue to take precedence over technical, environmental and social considerations. What we are seeing is a dictatorship of investments and of the power of the big corporations, with the government s complicity, Lucio Cuenca, director of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), tol…

ยังเป็นเกมที่มีผู้เล่นให้ความสนใจมากทีเดียวสำหรับ Super Mario ภาค Maker 2 ที่มาพร้อมกับไอเดียสุดเจ๋งให้ผู้เล่นได้มีโอกาสเข้าถึงเครื่องมือในการออกแบบฉากการเล่นสำหรับเกมแนวมาริโอ้แบบตะลุยด่านด้านข้างเพื่อนำมาแบ่งปันกันบนโลกออนไลน์ และด้วยระบบการเล่นดังกล่าวก็ทำให้เกมเมอร์ต่างส�…

โดยปกติแล้ว เกมต่อสู้มักจะมีโหมดเนื้อเรื่องที่ไม่ยาวมากนัก และ Mortal Kombat 1 ซึ่งเป็นเกมที่กำลังจะเปิดตัวเร็ว ๆ นี้ ก็ไม่ใช่ข้อยกเว้น โดยล่าสุดทาง Ed Boon ผู้กำกับเกม ได้ออกมาเปิดเผยว่าโหมดเนื้อเรื่องของเกมจะยาวนานพอ ๆ กับ ภาคก่อนหน้า

Ed Boon ตอบคำถามแฟน ๆ เกี่ยวกับความยาวของโหมดเนื้อเรื่องใน…

Joyce Mulama

MAPUTO, Sep 22 2006 (IPS) – In an ideal world, all of Africa s women would have access to clinics, nurses, obstetricians, medicines: the panoply of staff and equipment needed to make the process of giving birth as safe as possible.
Failing that, what can be done to lessen the risks that come with delivering babies? For one, improve the skills of traditional birth attendants (TBAs), say delegates who met this week in Mozambique at an African Union (AU) gathering on sexual and reproductive health care.

We need to look at upgrading their skills so that they are not TBAs, but are at a higher level such as midwives, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told journalists in the Mozambican capital Maputo.

This i…

Peter Richards

PORT OF SPAIN, Oct 31 2006 (IPS) – The latest sign that the Patrick Manning administration is not about to back down on its plans to permit the construction of smelter plants in Trinidad and Tobago came during the government s presentation of its 2006-7 national budget to the parliament earlier this month.
Prime Minister Manning told legislators that two aluminium smelter plants, including one by the U.S. firm Alcoa, would be built here even though the government understands the concerns raised by citizens regarding the construction of these smelters .

The other plant, Alutrint, is a partnership between the locally-based National Energy Corporation (NEC) and the Sural Group of Venezuela. It is 60 percent owned by the government with the Venezuelan group…

Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK, Nov 30 2006 (IPS) – Smallpox, polio and a host of other contagious, often fatal diseases have been stopped in their tracks by simple vaccines. More than two decades into the quest to untangle the secrets of the notoriously changeable HIV virus, is there still reason for hope?
IPS spoke with Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, and Anjali Nayyar, vice president for country and regional programmes at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), who helped launch the first AIDS vaccine trial in India, about the challenges research scientists around the world are currently facing.

IPS: The head of IAVI, Seth Berkley, said recently that even a partially effective AIDS vaccine given to only 30 percent of …

Mithre J. Sandrasagra

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 2007 (IPS) – The world s response to protect and support HIV-infected and AIDS-affected children remains tragically insufficient , but that is beginning to change, according to a new report by the U.N. children s agency UNICEF.
The Unite for Children, Unite Against AIDS initiative was launched in October 2005 by UNICEF with the goal of putting the missing face of children at the centre of the global HIV/AIDS agenda.

This week s report, titled Children and AIDS: A Stocktaking Report , evaluates the world s response to protect and support AIDS-affected children in the year since the initiative began.

One year ago we did not know how many children were on treatment, we did not know how many governments were spending m…

ท่ามกลางกระแสของการรีเมคและรีมาสเตอร์ที่กำลังมาแรงจนทำให้ทางผู้จัดงาน The Game Awards เองก็ยังแอบมีเอนเอียงอยากจะทำหมวดเสนอรายชื่อเกมใหม่ ต้องบอกเลยว่ามีเกมที่ถูกเพ่งเล็งว่าจะได้รับการนำมาปัดฝุ่นใหม่อยู่บ่อยมากอีกเกมก็คือ Final Fantasy Tactics ที่มาพร้อมเกมเพลย์แหวกแนวทั้งยังมีโทนเรื่องที่ให้…