News headlines in October 2010, page 8

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) honoured 25 local and indigenous community groups from the developing world with Equator prizes for outstanding work in biodiversity conservation, poverty reduction and adaptation to climate change on Monday. The event was hosted in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History, Conservation International, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), The Nature Conservancy and the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Experts meeting at the United Nations Monday stressed that immunisation is the key to achieve Millennium Development Goal 4 - reduce child mortality - and unless donors open their purses and close the funding gap, children in the poorest countries will continue to die of vaccine-preventable diarrhoea and pneumonia - the two biggest killers of children under five.

Hundreds of people who believe they were falsely detained and imprisoned by the Department of Justice in the wake of the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks are now seeking redress through the U.S. courts. The exact number of detainees is unclear, as no lists were ever released publicly. But according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General in 2002, 475 9/11 detainees were arrested and detained in New York and New Jersey. Hundreds more were arrested across the country.

Recent raids by federal agents on the homes and offices of peace activists are being viewed by civil libertarians and civil society groups as further proof that the U.S. is morphing into a 'surveillance state' where the right to privacy and other constitutional protections are being quietly whittled away.

In Brazil, 136 million voters will head to the polls in Sunday's presidential runoff election, after a campaign heavy on recriminations and moralistic attacks and weak on substantive issues.

A waste processing company and the surrounding community are at odds over the operation of a plant that provides energy for Mexico's cement industry.

Iraq and Afghanistan rank near rock-bottom in an index of corruption in 178 countries that found that nearly three- quarters of the countries surveyed showed serious corruption problems.

In the spacious lobby of the Nuestra Señora de Altagracia maternity hospital, more than a hundred people wait quietly in chairs, overlooked by a 20-foot-high coloured mosaic inset portraying the patron saint of the Dominican Republic.

Valencia Lake, with an area of 375 square kilometers and situated west of Caracas, has overflowed as a result of recent heavy rains and threatens about 1,000 homes towards the east in the city of Maracay.

It is safe to say that the candidates running in Florida for the Nov. 2 congressional elections do not have a campaign stop planned for Tallevast. Residents there believe that they have been abandoned by the government.