News headlines in February 2012, page 9

Latin America and the Caribbean celebrated their 45th anniversary as a nuclear-weapon-free zone amidst allegations of British deployment of nuclear weapons to the South Atlantic and with no specific regime for the transport of radioactive waste.

Latin America and the Caribbean celebrated their 45th anniversary as a nuclear-weapon-free zone amidst allegations of British deployment of nuclear weapons to the South Atlantic and with no specific regime for the transport of radioactive waste.

The number of journalists imprisoned worldwide reached a 15-year high in 2011, driven by repressive states seeking to choke the flow of information.

The flood of economic woes devastating Greece and Portugal are evidence that the German prescription imposed by a troika of multilateral creditors is not working, and that both countries are heading into a blind alley, says economics professor Mario Olivares.

The little village of Chinagoder, on the Niger-Mali border, has become a refugee camp, flooded with Malian families fleeing fighting between their regular army and Tuareg rebels known as the MNLA - the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad.

Ethiopia says that the double-digit economic growth the country has experienced over the last seven years has started benefitting the country’s majority by boosting their income and productivity in agriculture and small-scale businesses.

After a recent Israeli Supreme Court decision allowed Israeli companies to maintain quarrying and mining activities in the occupied West Bank, local human rights groups and activists say the decision has opened the door dangerously to Israel’s pillaging of other Palestinian resources.

Irman Meilandi unhesitatingly attributes the return of birds, wildlife and the forests around his hilly village of Mandalamekar in West Java province to conservation advice streaming in over community radio.

The survival of Sumatra's tigers, elephants, orangutans, rhinos, as well as indigenous communities, is threatened by the 'world's fastest deforestation rate', caused by none other than the pulp and paper industry, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

It’s always cold in this city in Mexico’s Sierra Nevada mountains, more than 2,400 metres above sea level, at the foot of the Popocatépetl volcano.