News headlines in September 2011, page 3

The development of one part of Brazil's semiarid Northeast, the Agreste region in the state of Pernambuco, could begin with the construction of canals that will bring in water diverted from the São Francisco River.

The exceptionally nutritious moringa tree, native to the foothills of the Himalayas and cultivated in several Latin American countries, could help fight malnutrition in this region.

The top one percent of earners in the United States now controls over 40 percent of the nation's wealth, their income steadily rising while much of the country earns less than what it did a decade ago and an all-time high of 46 million Americans now live below the official poverty line.

Thirteen doctors and nurses who treated anti-government protesters during demonstrations in Bahrain earlier this year have been jailed for 15 years for crimes against the state.

At first sight, the village of Rokwe on the outskirts of Juba looks like any other village in South Sudan. The sun shines bright on the grass roofs of the mud huts and sounds from a church choir practising can be heard in the distance. Only the scenery at the local health centre gives away that this is no ordinary place.

The threat of radioactive contamination faced particularly by children after the Mar. 11 nuclear disaster in Japan has touched the heart of the Japanese public, and become a major political and social issue.

Bolivia's main trade union declared a 24-hour general strike Wednesday to protest Sunday's police crackdown on indigenous demonstrators who were protesting the construction of a road through a pristine rainforest preserve.

During the last days of Troy Davis's life, activists intensified what was already significant pressure on both U.S. President Barack Obama and the U.S. Department of Justice (USDOJ), a federal agency under Obama's purview, to save Davis, but Obama declined to act.

A broad coalition of 20 human rights, labour and consumer groups is appealing to the administration of President Barack Obama not to renew military aid and sales to the Uzbekistan, widely considered one of the world's most repressive dictatorships.

In a development that could help resolve an eight-year-old diplomatic and humanitarian standoff, the Mujaheddin-e Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group that has several thousand adherents at a military camp in Iraq, has agreed to allow residents to apply for refugee status and be interviewed individually by U.N. officials.