NAIROBI, Mar 20 (IPS) - With less than a month to the historic multi-party poll in Africa’s largest country, Sudan, eminent African leaders are calling for a peaceful and calm election process.

ATHENS, Mar 20 (IPS) - Serious concerns are being raised about the impact of the ongoing recession in Greece on the political and economic situation in the neighbouring Balkans.

NEW YORK, Mar 19 (IPS) - The families of two prisoners who died at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are asking a federal court to reconsider its ruling dismissing their lawsuit, which seeks to hold federal officials and the U.S. government accountable for their sons' torture, arbitrary detention, and ultimate deaths.

WASHINGTON, Mar 19 (IPS) - This week, acting Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan dissolved his cabinet, further securing his tenuous hold on the country's top post amidst rising unrest in the Niger Delta and flaring religious tensions in the central region of the country.

WASHINGTON, Mar 19 (IPS) - This time last year, United States federal legislation on climate change was starting to take shape, seemingly more pressing matters were taking up the bulk of U.S. policymakers' time, and a major climate conference was looming at the end of the year.

HAVANA, Mar 19 (IPS) - At the age of 17, Meybelin Bernárdez is clear about the future: "When I finish my studies, I'll return to help my community get on its feet," the young Garifuna woman from Honduras, who is studying medicine in Cuba, says without hesitation.

LUSAKA, Mar 19 (IPS) - Naomi Mulenga is determined to beat the odds by finishing her school education and becoming a nurse – despite being a teenage mother.

NAIROBI, Mar 19 (IPS) - After torrential rains and floods claimed lives in Kenya’s North Rift region, hundreds of displaced people are now in dire need of relief aid.

HONOLULU, Hawaii, Mar 19 (IPS) - Iran's 347-billion-dollar budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year, finally approved by the Guardian Council in Tehran Tuesday - just days before its scheduled implementation on the Iranian New Year Mar. 21 - appears likely to add to the tensions and uncertainty that have bedeviled the country since the disputed June 2009 elections.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 (IPS) - The Sri Lankan government continues to challenge U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's right to appoint a panel of experts to advise him on the human rights situation - euphemistically called "accountability issues" – following the end of a protracted conflict against a secessionist group widely considered a terrorist organisation.

MEXICO CITY, Mar 19 (IPS) - The increase in kidnappings of Central American migrants crossing Mexico on their way to the United States will be brought up at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) current session next Monday.

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 (IPS) - Despite numerous factors that threaten the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015 - a global financial crisis, a food crisis, climate change, natural disasters – U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said this week that his main concern is "political will".

RANGOON, Mar 19 (IPS) - In teashops and markets, the national election due this year in Burma is the talk of the town, so much so that Thuzar, who did not take part in the 1990 poll, is quite eager to cast her vote this time.

WASHINGTON, Mar 19 (IPS) - Iraq's largest secular bloc appears to be the biggest surprise of the parliamentary elections at a time when some of the most well-known religious groups and figures have sustained great losses, preliminary election results so far indicate.

NAIROBI, Mar 19 (IPS) - Kenya’s Constitutional Court heard on Mar. 18 from counsel representing the government that the Anti-Counterfeit Act of 2008 does not threaten the importation or manufacturing of cheap generic medicines and therefore does not deny Kenyans their constitutional right to life.

KATHMANDU, Mar 19 (IPS) - When it gets cold during Nepal’s winter nights, Yem Prasad Gurung turns on his heater run by liquefied petroleum gas. When it gets dark, he switches on the lights that rely on a solar inverter – and to make sure he gets water, he turns on a generator-powered water pump.

BANGKOK, Mar 19 (IPS) - For exiled journalists working on shortwave radio programming aimed at Burmese and Tibetan listeners, dodging the ‘enemy’ in the name of freer speech is often a cat-and-mouse game.

GUATEMALA CITY, Mar 18 (IPS) - Civil society groups in Guatemala say a court decision authorising former Guatemalan president Alfonso Portillo's extradition to the United States is just a first step in a lengthy process.

BLANTYRE, Mar 18 (IPS) - The thickest book on secondary school teacher Hellen Ndalama’s desk is her indigenous language dictionary. It is also her most-used book.

DAKAR, Mar 18 (IPS) - Despite the financial sector boom in Senegal, small and medium sized businesses (SMBs), which represent over 90 percent of the industrial fabric of the country, struggle to access funding for their development, their representatives claim.