News headlines in October 2011, page 14

After much delay, Finland has been chosen to host a 2012 conference to establish a zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in the Middle East. The meeting aims to bring together all Middle Eastern countries, some of which share a long history of disagreement, such as Iran and Israel.

A State Department announcement that it will delay the shipment of 53 million dollars in new arms to Bahrain pending the results of an international commission investigating alleged abuses by the kingdom's security forces earlier this year has evoked mixed reactions from human rights groups here.

Yacouba Sawadogo, a peasant farmer from Burkina Faso, is known as the 'man who stopped the desert.' But when he first tried to save his arid land from desertification by planting the trees that have since grown into a 15-hectare forest, people in his village thought he was mad.

As streams dry out, groundwater levels dwindle, and forests and other vegetation yield to droughts or sever storms, women who live their lives in the rural areas of Ghana have to spend more time and energy finding water and food for their families.

Microfinance initiatives to fund development could benefit from reinvigorating their aims and taking on new, integrated approaches, according to experts at the 2011 International Forum on the Social and Solidarity Economy in Montreal.

Argentina's weak, fragmented opposition is going to the polls on Sunday offering neither strong leaders nor clear alternatives capable of winning voters away from President Cristina Fernández, who is expected to easily win a first-round victory.

It is growing increasingly likely that the world will face renewed risks of instability and slowdown before fully recovering from the so-called Great Recession. This is largely because the fragility and imbalances that have built up over recent years as a result of misguided policies in the US and Europe cannot be easily undone, regardless of the policy pursued today, writes Ylmaz Akyuz, the Chief Economist of the South Centre.

The social repercussions of the current economic cataclysm are of an unprecedented brutality: in the European Union, there are more than 23 million unemployed and 80 million poor. The young are the primary victims, writes Ignacio Ramonet, editor of "Le Monde diplomatique en espanol".

'We recognize finance as part of the global commons,' affirms the Transforming Finance statement, signed by financial professionals worldwide critical of today's casino capital markets. Financialization has produced the global debt bubble. Needed now are write-offs and haircuts to bond-holders and bank shareholders, a curb on bettors buying credit default swaps, as well as below 1% financial transaction taxes to limit volatility and high-frequency trading by computers —now 60% of all transactions, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets:Growing the Green Economy and other books, and president of Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil)

Turkish forces have launched an incursion into the mountains of northern Iraq following simultaneous attacks by Kurdish separatists in southeastern Turkey that killed at least 26 soldiers.