News headlines in 2012, page 3

JOHANNESBURG, Dic 27 (IPS) - South Africa plans to boost links between Africa and its partners in the Brazil, Russia, India and China alliance at a landmark summit, which will be held in this country in March, Xavier Carim, deputy director general at the Department of Trade and Industry, told IPS.

BUENOS AIRES, Dic 26 (IPS) - Although it didn't receive much media coverage, this year Argentina's justice system made strides in speeding up human rights cases, and dozens of defendants were convicted, three decades after the end of the 1976-1983 dictatorship.

ROSEAU, Dominica, Dic 26 (IPS) - Imagine Guyana and Dominica without forests and rivers, or Antigua, Barbados and St. Lucia without beaches.

SAN SALVADOR, Dic 26 (IPS) - Salvadoran youth gang leaders have accepted a proposal to declare 10 municipalities free of violence – a bold plan that has run up against the mistrust of vast segments of society with regard to the gangs and their aim of reinsertion in society.

NAIROBI, Dic 26 (IPS) - Despite the development boom in state-of-the-art luxury homes in Kenya, the country's upper class has fallen on hard times and can no longer afford them, according to economic experts here. Instead, Kenya's formerly wealthy have now become part of the continent's growing middle class.

KAMPALA, Dic 26 (IPS) - Rising investments in Africa's service sector, the unlocking of its vast natural resources and the sound economic policies pursued by African countries in the last two decades are spurring the rise of the continent's middle class at a faster rate than population growth.

PORT BLAIR, India, Dic 26 (IPS) - In commemoration of the eighth anniversary of the Asian tsunami, Wednesday was a day of prayer and mourning across the Andaman Nicobar Islands – located at the juncture of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea – and south India's coastal Tamil Nadu state, two areas that suffered thousands of casualties on that fateful day.

PAGER JURANG, Indonesia, Dic 25 (IPS) - From her half-built house, Ari Haryani takes a few steps to reach a freshly cemented path that snakes through the narrow, dusty walkways of this resettlement village. The path offers the 36-year-old a route to safety in case the nearby Mount Merapi, Indonesia's most active volcano, erupts.

GAZA CITY, Dic 25 (IPS) - On Nov. 17, four days into Israel's eight-day assault on the Gaza Strip, deputy Israeli Prime Minister Eli Yishai publicly called for the Israeli army to "blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water".

RIO DE JANEIRO, Dic 24 (IPS) - Environmental authorities in this southeastern Brazilian city are installing more air quality control stations in the locations where competitions are to be held during the 2016 Olympic Games, so that air pollution will not hurt the athletes' performance.