News headlines in March 2012, page 21

A family planning summit is scheduled to take place in London in July to generate political commitment and substantial resources to meet the family planning needs of women in the world’s poorest countries by 2020. The event will be organized by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and other partners.

While the trials against members of the military and police for human rights abuses committed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship move ahead, the regime’s economic crimes have also begun to come to light.

'We have not been paid since the Americans left Iraq last December. If nothing changes, I will abandon this checkpoint,' Saif Ahmed tells IPS. He is one of the militiamen who claim to have defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Rights groups and activists are warning of a rapidly deteriorating political climate in Angola following a police raid on a private newspaper and a violent crackdown on anti-government protests.

News of Vienna's Schoenbrunn Zoo's newest attraction shocked Jamaican authorities. The unlikely stars: a flock of 45 endangered Jamaican Amazon parrots, hatched from eggs smuggled out of the island in rum-cake boxes.

Our oceans face a grim outlook in the coming decades. Ocean acidification, loss of marine biodiversity, climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources all point to the urgent need for a new paradigm on caring for the earth’s oceans—'business as usual' is simply not an option anymore, experts say.

While U.S. officials insisted their counterinsurgency strategy is still working, Sunday's pre-dawn massacre by a U.S. staff sergeant of 16 people, including nine children, in their homes in Kandahar province has dealt yet another body blow to Washington's hopes to sustain a significant military presence in Afghanistan after 2014.

While the trials against members of the military and police for human rights abuses committed during Argentina’s 1976-1983 dictatorship move ahead, the regime’s economic crimes have also begun to come to light.

It takes 1,600 litres of water to produce one kilo of bread. This is the type of calculation used to measure a water footprint, the total volume of freshwater used to produce the goods and services consumed by people and communities.

In a Kibera-bound mini-bus taxi, the driver changes the station just as he turns onto Ngong Road, kilometres away from the Kenyan slum. He tunes into Pamoja Radio 99.9 FM, a local community radio station that broadcasts only in Kibera.