News headlines in September 2012, page 5

WASHINGTON, Sep 26 (IPS) - With all foreign troops due to leave Afghanistan just two years from now, the news out of the Central Asian nation is becoming increasingly gloomy.

WASHINGTON, Sep 25 (IPS) - With just six weeks left before the U.S. presidential polls, analysts on Tuesday suggested that recent demographic changes in the United States, particularly through immigration, have made it more difficult than ever for a Republican candidate to vie for president.

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 25 (IPS) - Addressing the 67th General Assembly at the United Nations in New York Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama accused the Iranian government of propping up the dictatorship in Syria and supporting terrorist groups abroad.

BULAWAYO, Sep 25 (IPS) - If women had equal access to productive farming resources, they could increase their yields by 20 to 30 percent and potentially raise total agricultural output in developing countries by 2.5 to four percent.

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Sep 25 (IPS) - The planet can be cooled a whopping 0.5 degrees C with fast action to reduce air pollution from coal-fired power plants, gas fracking, diesel trucks and biomass burning, recent studies show.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 25 (IPS) - You do not need to live in the countryside to grow vegetables, as hundreds of thousands of people involved in urban agriculture from Havana to Buenos Aires know very well. Now they are being joined by residents of Rio de Janeiro’s “favelas”.

GENEVA, Sep 25 (IPS) - India may be famous for the Taj Mahal, its religious ceremonies, Bollywood films and one of the highest economic growth rates in recent years. But more importantly, India has had a positive global impact through its supply of vast quantities of low-cost, good-quality generic medicines, which have saved or prolonged millions of lives.

GUATEMALA CITY, Sep 25 (IPS) - Since Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey became attorney general in Guatemala in 2010, a string of crimes involving military personnel who fought leftwing guerrillas, drug traffickers and organised crime have been cleared up.

VENICE, Sep 25 (IPS) - “We should find the way, with our small degrowth movement in the global North, to align ourselves with the environmental justice movement originating with indigenous peoples from the South,” Catalan ecological economist Juan Martinez-Alier said at the third international degrowth conference in Venice, Italy.

RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Sep 25 (IPS) - Hassan Hader’s application for a permit to work in Israel has been rejected four times. Now waiting to hear back from the Israeli authorities on his latest attempt, the 52-year-old father of five said he has no choice but to keep applying.