News headlines in 2009, page 350

A powerful symbolic reconciliation was staged in Harare on Feb. 11 when President Robert Mugabe administered an oath of office to make his bitter political rival Morgan Tsvangirai prime minister of a government of national unity.

It is busy at the gates of Bralima brewery in Lubumbashi, the capital of Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). About 60 men are waiting at the doors, hoping for them to open and someone to offer them work. Their numbers have grown since the global economic crisis which has caused the collapse of the local mining industry.

The release of Pakistani rogue nuclear scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, underlines major issues confronting Pakistan -and indeed the world - ranging from nuclear proliferation to governance, corruption, hypocrisy, and how public opinion is shaped by falsehoods.

With the new U.S. administration comfortably situated and setting political goals and policies, looming Iranian elections cast a long shadow over one of its thorniest issues: how to deal with the Islamic Republic.

There is less water now in the Tigris, and it is less clean. The river has fewer fish, and rising fuel and other costs mean they are more costly to catch. It's not, as Hamza Majit finds, a good time to be a fisher.

'The peace process is based on three false basic assumptions,' said Avigdor Lieberman, leader of Israel's extreme right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, which will dictate the formation and political course of the next Israeli government.

Five weeks after India handed over a dossier to Islamabad containing detailed evidence on the Nov. 26-29 Mumbai terror attacks, Pakistan has finally promised an official response, based on investigations by its Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).

Israel's foreign minister Tzipi Livni clung precariously to a narrow lead over her right-wing rival Benjamin Netanyahu as vote counting neared conclusion from Israel's Tuesday general election. Both would-be prime ministers continue to claim victory: 'I won,' read the headline of the country's biggest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronot, alongside the photos of the two.

Central Asia is shaping up to be an early test of Barack Obama's foreign policy, as the increased demands of the war in Afghanistan force his administration to decide how far to accommodate or to pressure the region's autocratic governments.

It's the latest dance craze here and many artists have hopped on the bandwagon. But when the latest 'daggering' song hit the airwaves, government, broadcast regulators, civil society and others in Jamaica said enough is enough.