News headlines in February 2012, page 12

Community radio stations in Chile continue to call for a legal framework that would allow them to operate without restrictions, because although a specific law was passed nearly two years ago, it has not yet entered into effect.

When the 193-member General Assembly adopted a resolution against Syria by an overwhelming majority Thursday, the U.N.'s highest policy making body was conscious of the fact that its rulings - unlike the dictates of the 15-member Security Council - are politically impotent because they have no enforcement power.

The dismissal of charges in Colombia against Swiss mediator Jean-Pierre Gontard, who helped negotiate the release of numerous hostages held by guerrillas in this country between 1998 and 2008, is 'magnificent news, for bilateral relations as well as at a purely human level,' Colombia’s ambassador to Switzerland, Claudia Turbay, told IPS.

A recent government crackdown on Russian media, particularly online information portals specialising in health tips and harm reduction methods for drug users, has sparked widespread public opposition, with critics claiming that the 'draconian silencing' of public health advocates could worsen an already perilous health situation in the country.

Like most of its neighbours in the English-speaking Caribbean, Barbados's main economic asset is its coastal zone.

Lower water levels and increasing pressure from overfishing in the Paraná river are causing an unprecedented decline in fish stocks in the river that is regarded as the second most biodiverse in South America after the Amazon river.

For the first time in its history, Serbia has bought back a company sold to a foreign investor almost ten years ago, for the symbolic price of a single dollar. But while the purchase has stirred a sense of national pride, it is hardly a success story for the Balkan economy; rather, it has exposed the failure of a decade-long effort to privatise the national economy.

With the June deadline for congressional elections approaching, Libyans previously in exile are returning home to take part in the construction of a new political landscape. Political churning is well under way as Libya marks the first anniversary of the ouster of the Muammar Gaddafi regime Friday.

On the first anniversary of Libya’s revolution, Sirte brigade members lounge on leather couches in the lobby of the upscale Mahari Hotel, supervising its reconstruction. A base for the Misrata rebels during October’s fierce fighting, the hotel is notorious as the site where 65 alleged Gaddafi loyalists were executed on its seafront grounds.

According to European mainstream economists and politicians, the solution to the Greek debt crisis, and the only option for returning the country to a path of progress, is 'fiscal consolidation'.