News headlines in April 2012, page 5

For more than a week this past February, the city choked on the acrid smoke that forced schools and business to close. It racked up millions of dollars in lost production and an estimated 60 million dollars in firefighting costs as the city tried to combat yet another fire at Kingston's Riverton city dump.

Authorities in Maryland and Virginia have rescued the Chesapeake Bay's blue crab from the brink of collapse, tripling its population in five years, by using methods that emerging crabmeat-exporting countries in Asia and Central America could emulate, scientists say.

For the first time in 38 years, the former soldiers and officers who opened the doors to democracy in Portugal did not take part in the official celebration of the Carnation Revolution, which toppled Europe’s longest dictatorship in 1974.

More than 1,000 people took the Occupy Wall Street Movement message straight to the one percent Tuesday, most of them rallying outside the Wells Fargo stockholders meeting in the heart of San Francisco's financial district - and some 30 of them 'mic-checking' inside the meeting.

Within a decade, 'most' of the global population could have access to affordable basic health care — if a series of 'ambitious' programmes are put into action around the world. This is according to a new report released by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) here on Tuesday.

The United Nations, which has remained focused on the world's political and military hotspots, has turned its attention to the bigger socioeconomic issues facing adolescents and youth, including poverty, sexual abuse, female genital mutilation and lack of reproductive health care.

As the May 6 date for Serbia’s general election inches closer, two young Belgrade playwrights have capitalised on the electoral war of words between the pro-European camp and conservative nationalists to highlight the dark side of propaganda and expose the omnipotence of party membership.

When the verdict against Liberia’s former President Charles Taylor for war crimes in Sierra Leone is handed down on Thursday, it will be of no help to the many former combatants of the country’s brutal civil war who have not been reintegrated into society. Instead, they will continue to pose a threat to Sierra Leone’s future stability.

In Grenoble, France, there is a 40-metre-long scale model of the Jirau dam that is being built in Brazil’s Amazon jungle. The exact replica of the project makes is possible to foresee and analyse possible risks, such as the heavy flow of sediment in the Madeira River.

A pioneer of citizens’ journalism in Vietnam is risking 20 years in jail for defending Internet freedom and exposing the draconian censorship laws in this communist party-ruled country.