News headlines in September 2011, page 4

With 432 murders reported last year, Chicago's homicide rate is over 50 percent higher than that of New York City or Los Angeles, according to the 2010 crime report of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Participants at the ‘Tunza International Children and Youth Conference’ underway in this Indonesian city shared best practices and ideas with fellow delegates on Wednesday, hoping they would get replicated.

In order for global climate change policies and efforts to progress, intense local activism and countries most adversely affected by climate change must play a leading role.

Greece will remain in the eurozone but must meet its reform commitments in full, Jose Manuel Barroso, the head of the European Commission, has said.

International justice advocates are worried that donors will deprive the International Criminal Court (ICC) of sufficient funding next year, hindering the court’s ability to fulfil an expanding mandate that will stretch from Kenya to Libya and potentially Ivory Coast.

Africa needs to remain focused and continue following the late Professor Wangari Maathai’s initiatives for environmental sustainability in order to address climate change across the continent, environmentalists say.

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.

Some symbolic acts are powerful reflections of a broader struggle. In March some 300 women planted trees in the Santa River basin in northwest Peru to demonstrate their determination to preserve the environment and help adapt to climate change.

To save the planet from climate change and the loss of biodiversity, we must leave capitalism behind and seek out a less consumerist, more socially just system, insists French environmental journalist Hervé Kempf.

Some 1.1 million children with disabilities in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States are hidden away at home or in institutions. They are likely to be out of school and among those most vulnerable to neglect, abuse and exploitation, UNICEF said at a major conference which opened in Moscow Tuesday.