News headlines in March 2012, page 28

Devastating as the Tohoku earthquake was it gave the local women of the remote region an opportunity to come into their own and take on leadership roles in an essentially patriarchal country.

In Latin America, where bank loans for environmentally sustainable activities are rare, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is seeking to foment green credit.

Two days after U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder outlined the statutory justifications for 'targeted killings', civil liberties groups here continue to question the legality of the Obama administration's policy, particularly as it applies to the rights and very lives of both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals.

When she was 16, Kibriyo Khaitova’s parents told her that if she didn’t marry, she’d soon be a spinster. So, like many girls from Tajikistan, Khaitova married a man her family found for her. Now 20, she has two children, no husband and is fending for herself.

Malaysians protesting against an Australian-owned rare earth refinery, that will generate radioactive waste, are determined to agitate until the project is abandoned.

The world's nuclear weapons industry is being funded - and kept alive - by more than 300 banks, pension funds, insurance companies and asset managers in 30 countries, according to a new study.

Social unrest and demands for change are not a negative thing during times of crisis like today, says Rubens Ricupero, a Brazilian diplomat and thinker.

More than 10,000 U.S. citizens descended on Capitol Hill Tuesday under the direction of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading voice of the powerful Israel lobby here, to urge their congressional representatives to take a more aggressive stance towards Iran.

Serbia has reached its historic goal of becoming a European Union (EU) member candidate after being a pariah state for years. But analysts warn that the undisputed political success may not bring immediate results.

Foggy details surrounding Europe’s anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA) have divided pubic opinion, with activists on one end of the spectrum claiming it to be the end of Internet freedom and the generic drug market, while proponents continue to defend the act as a 'modest' agreement to protect Europe’s intellectual property.