News headlines in 2011, page 180

Defence analysts in Pakistan believe that foregoing 800 million US dollars worth of aid may be a fair bargain for ridding this country of a over a hundred ‘military trainers’ who were suspected of being spies.

Laurie Humphreys was on the first ship after World War II that brought 150 British boys and girls, aged five to 14 years, to Australia in 1947. At 13, he was promised oranges and sunshine and an adventurous holiday, but reality was different.

The Burkina Faso authorities have sounded the alarm over the increased rate of degradation of forests in this Sahelian country.

Being educated during the country’s civil war was almost impossible. But Victoria Maja wanted to become a doctor, and in order to do so she had to leave South Sudan and live and study in the north. She was one of the lucky ones.

Besides attracting international investors, Cambodia’s new stock exchange is expected to nudge this Southeast Asian country towards greater transparency.

Iran’s extreme rate of seizures of opium and heroin spurs a meeting between Yury Fedotov, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to discuss counter- narcotics efforts.

Fedotov arrived in Tehran on a three-day official visit. This visit will also include the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Two of the greatest evils of the 20th century -colonialism and the Cold War- were both overcome with nonviolence: Gandhi's nonviolent campaign against British colonialism and the nonviolent demonstrations, especially in Gdansk and Leipzig, which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, writes Johan Galtung, Rector of the TRANSCEND Peace University and author of "A Theory of Conflict".

Fortified by formal U.S. recognition as Libya's legitimate government, fighters loyal to the rebel Benghazi-based Transitional National Council (TNC) made a key advance Monday by reportedly gaining control of most of the eastern oil port of Brega.

Colombia's DAS domestic secret police service was under the authority of then president Álvaro Uribe 'and it is impossible to think that he didn't know about' the intelligence agency's illegal spying activities, Isabelle Durant, a vice president of the European Parliament, said on a recent visit to this South American country.

A new documentary showing graphic footage from the end of Sri Lanka's war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 refuels calls for an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity.