News headlines in February 2012, page 14

An alteration of the relationship between the Amazon rainforest and the billions of cubic metres of water transported by air from the equatorial Atlantic Ocean to the Andes Mountains could endanger the resilience of a biome that is crucial for the global climate, warns a recently concluded two-decade research project.

Latin America and the Caribbean are discussing ways to step up supervision of the use of nuclear materials in the region and contribute to the creation of more nuclear weapon free zones around the world, on the 45th anniversary of the treaty that banned nuclear arms in the region.

A month after the first anniversary of the Tunisian revolution, the North African country is being rocked by labour protests supported by the Union General Tunisienne du Travail (UGTT), the main labour union in the country. The protests are centered in the impoverished western regions.

A knock on her front door throws Beenish, a 28-year-old housewife from Lahore, into a fix: should she allow the female volunteer vaccinators to administer the oral polio vaccine (OPV) to her two-year-old son, or not?

A global coalition of development activists and non- governmental organisations (NGOs) is calling on the World Bank's governors to ensure that Bank President Robert Zoellick's successor is chosen in an 'open and merit-based process' that will give borrowing countries a major say in the selection.

Latin America and the Caribbean are discussing ways to step up supervision of the use of nuclear materials in the region and contribute to the creation of more nuclear weapon free zones around the world, on the 45th anniversary of the treaty that banned nuclear arms in the region.

Facing implicit death threats from Nepal's ruling Maoist political party, two former U.N. officials based in Kathmandu have appealed to the United Nations for help and protection.

In the midst of the debt and financial crises plaguing key European countries, Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja has joined a growing international chorus calling for the introduction of a global financial market tax and the shutting down of tax havens, saying all that is needed is the political will to do it.

Sporting an olive green combat jacket and a beret, civil war veteran Carlos Hernández prays at the tomb of slain Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero at the Metropolitan Cathedral of El Salvador, which a score of former guerrillas have occupied to demand assistance to help them out of poverty.

The capture in Peru of the last major leader of the Maoist rebel group Sendero Luminoso is a mortal blow to the movement that managed to survive thanks to its connection with the production of coca and cocaine in the north of the country.