News headlines in December 2011, page 3

A judge in Argentina has begun to investigate human rights crimes committed during Spain's civil war and the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1936-1975).

Arab League observers are to visit three key protest hubs in Syria as world powers have urged Damascus to give full access to monitor if the country is implementing a plan to end a crackdown on protests.

Most of the cases brought before the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) include gender-based crimes, but advocates say the court is still falling short in ensuring that women play an active role in decision-making and outreach at the highest levels.

Veteran observers of U.S.-Iran relations know better than to be optimistic about the chances for reconciliation between the two countries. It has long been the pattern - indeed the curse - that when one side was ready to engage, the other was not.

When U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took office in January 2007, one of his first announcements was to call for the resignation of all senior high-ranking officials so that he could pick his own team of players.

'We need to be the ones to provide the answers to the questions of our times, because we are the main victims of the voracious policies of capitalism,' says Alexis Jiménez, a 23-year-old ethnologist who has spent the last two months camping out in front of the Mexico City Stock Exchange.

For Collins Otieno, the onset of a new day ushers in mixed fortunes that can either earn him some money or expose him to infection, as he struggles to make ends meet by scavenging for waste.

A growing number of municipalities in Argentina are joining a movement aimed at tackling the problem of waste disposal while producing clean, inexpensive energy.

This small town, barely 150 km away from the bustling eastern metropolis of Kolkata, hit news headlines in December 2008 when adivasis (indigenous people) led by Maoist rebels briefly captured it.

The environmental movement won the ideological battle with the growth of awareness on climate change. Environmentalists are no longer seen as 'loonies' or granola-eating hippies: the people seen as on the fringe' now are the climate sceptics who deny that global warming is caused by human activity.