MANILA, Mar 12 (IPS) - Filipino voters who have yet to make up their minds about their choice for their next president are being advised: look at each aspirant’s stance on reproductive health to help them gauge the candidate’s leadership mettle and political guts.

BAGHDAD, Mar 12 (IPS) - Under Saddam Hussein, women in government got a year's maternity leave; that is now cut to six months. Under the Personal Status Law in force since Jul. 14, 1958, when Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy, Iraqi women had most of the rights that Western women do.

LUXOR, Mar 12 (IPS) - Literacy programmes are teaching millions of Egyptians to read, but are struggling to keep up with the country's high population growth.

JERUSALEM, Mar 12 (IPS) - "The best laid-schemes o' mice an' men gang aft a-gley" (Scottish for 'going wrong').

BEIJING, Mar 12 (IPS) - After Chen Lusheng, a police sergeant from the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, died in December after an off-duty night of heavy drinking with local officials, his superiors tried to have him designated a "martyr" who "died in the line of duty," so that his family would receive greater compensation.

WASHINGTON, Mar 11 (IPS) - Releasing its annual report on the state of human rights around the world, the U.S. State Department Thursday said it was increasingly concerned about curbs imposed by foreign governments on civil society groups, the press, and Internet use.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (IPS) - Sri Lanka, which won a grueling decades-long battle against one of the world's most ferocious terrorist organisations last May, has scored a diplomatic victory in its ongoing war of words with the United Nations.

SANTIAGO, Mar 11 (IPS) - While Chile's new rightwing President Sebastián Piñera, who announced that he would lead "a government of reconstruction," was being sworn in Thursday, the earthquake-ravaged country was shaken by major aftershocks.

NAIROBI, Mar 11 (IPS) - Lillian Mutuku, a 34-year-old mother of three, describes her home in Katine area, in Kenya’s Eastern province Tala, as a harsh place to live. The soil is poor, she says, the sun beats down mercilessly and vegetation is sparse.

NEW YORK, Mar 11 (IPS) - Despite diplomatic maneuvering designed to block any review of its human rights record, a United Nations special rapporteur has told the U.N. Human Rights Council that proposed changes in Egypt's constitution "would create a permanent legal state of emergency".

CAPE TOWN, Mar 11 (IPS) - With the 15th-year review of the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women taking place at the ongoing Commission on the Status of Women in New York, South African teachers and education experts say they fear that a special focus on the advancement of girls is getting lost amidst the growing levels of poverty in the country.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 11 (IPS/TerraViva) - "I think that Islam has been misinterpreted. No Islamic law says violate women's rights and repress women," says Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi. "Democracy, human rights and women leadership are absolutely not hostile to the Islamic doctrine." And women in Iran are well aware of that, she says.

WASHINGTON, Mar 11 (IPS) - The United States should accept an "Islamist authority" in Somalia as part of a "constructive disengagement" strategy for the war-torn country, according to a new report released here by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) on Wednesday.

BANGKOK, Mar 11 (IPS) - It may have not won an Oscar, but its having been a final contender for the prestigious statue at the U.S. Academy Awards on Mar. 7 has taken ‘Burma VJ’ to heights never achieved by previous films depicting the oppression and courage in military-ruled Burma.

QUITO, Mar 11 (IPS) - "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." The words of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill after the 1942 defeat of Germany's forces in Africa are an apt description of the situation between the government of Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and the powerful Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE).

BANGKOK, Mar 11 (IPS) - Anyone who is still trying to look for neutrality or balance in the Thai media in these days of political ferment, ahead of large anti-government protests expected in the capital, has a pretty tough job.

JAKARTA, Mar 11 (IPS) - Battling the pain from a boil on his left thigh, 45-year-old Inggit Tukino pulled his two-wheeled cart through the overcrowded alleys of a slum in Rawabebek, Penjaringan hamlet in here North Jakarta.

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Mar 11 (IPS) - Vietnamese parents think of day care centres and kindergartens as safe, happy places to leave their children in, given the pressures of work and harder times. But they are no longer so sure now, after a series of incidents about mistreatment of young children that has shocked the public.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 (IPS/TerraViva) - Whenever gender empowerment is a vibrant topic of discussion internationally, some of the countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America are invariably singled out for their success stories in politics, education, health care or civil liberties even as Africa is mostly left out of political reckoning - and wrongly so.

NAIROBI, Mar 10 (IPS) - Kenyans affected by the violence that erupted after the country’s disputed presidential elections in 2007 may soon be able to speak out without fear. A new bill will offer better protection to state witnesses.