News headlines in March 2009, page 11

Climate change and corrupt practices are considered root causes for a potential water crisis of global proportions, leading to scarcity where water is needed most and flooding where it is needed the least.

Churches from South Africa and Germany are critically interrogating neoliberal globalisation in a process that they want to take up to United Nations level and also to their congregations ‘‘to build responsibility among people for what is happening in their world’’.

In an unprecedented move, President Barack Obama has reached out to both the people and the government of a leading U.S. adversary to wish them well in their upcoming Norouz, or New Year, holidays.

Trials on human rights abuses committed during Peru’s 1980-2000 civil war hurt military morale because 'they leave the impression that those of us who fought in the counterinsurgency war were only dedicated to killing civilians,' said Peruvian army chief Otto Guibovich.

The growth of tourism in Cuba in the first two months of this year has led to renewed hopes for the industry, once regarded as the engine of development on the island because of its rapid rise in the 1990s and its impact on the rest of the economy.

Brooklyn's historic Fort Greene Park lures locals each Saturday with a year-round vegetable and produce market. But it's not just a place for consumption. Locals come bearing plastic containers and buckets filled with squash skins, used tea bags and expired asparagus. It’s all fodder for compost.

Relations between the United States and left-leaning governments in South and Central America are likely to improve under the administration of President Barack Obama, according to some foreign policy analysts here.

U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, whose commando raids and airstrikes against suspected Taliban targets have caused large numbers of civilian casualties that have angered Afghans, have quietly been put under the 'tactical control' of the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, for the first time.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak weathered the recent war in neighbouring Gaza much more successfully than many observers had expected, and after the war ended Jan. 18 he emerged as the sole mediator in negotiations over stabilising the ceasefire and other key related issues.

Olivia González has been a schoolteacher for 30 years in Cerro Navia, one of the districts in the Chilean capital with the highest concentration of air pollution between April and August. A first-hand witness to its effects on health, she is pessimistic about the air she'll breathe this coming southern hemisphere winter.