News headlines in October 2011, page 15

Delegates to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification’s (UNCCD) meeting underway in this South Korean city are convinced that women, though affected most by desertification, hold the key to addressing hunger through land regeneration.

The severe financial and economic problems in Portugal are driving many women to desperation and pushing them into prostitution as a last resort to support their families.

Even slight changes in temperature can have a serious impact on the quality of wine, whose production is closely intertwined with the particular qualities of local soils and microclimates.

As the death toll from more than six months of popular unrest climbs past the 3,000 mark, the opposition to the government of President Bashar al-Assad is intensifying efforts to present a unified face to both the outside world and the Syrian people.

At the age of 56, Frazer Ayee has a lot to look back on. He has been an armed robber and a kidnapper. He was involved in uprisings in Togo and Liberia. In 1988 he was sentenced to death by Ghana’s defunct tribunal system, a brainchild of then dictator Jerry John Rawlings.

A 13-year-old boy has become the latest victim of state-sponsored forced child labour in Uzbekistan as its regime continues to ignore boycotts and international condemnation of its practices during the country’s annual cotton harvest.

The new European Commission proposals on a Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) have dropped every reference to development obligations, NGOs point out. They will not stop the European Union from threatening food security in developing nations, they say.

As the Occupy Movement spreads like wildfire across the United States and around the world, protests in the U.S. South are facing unique challenges.

The year 2010 endured 950 natural disasters, 90 percent of which were weather-related and cost the global community well over 130 billion dollars.

In a major breakthrough Tuesday, researchers announced that the vaccine candidate RTS,S reduces the risk of malaria by half in children ages five to 17 months, first results from a continuing phase three trial showed.