News headlines in 2010, page 373

Afghanistan may be one of the poorest countries in the world, but official figures do not quite paint a picture of a country deep in the throes of poverty and underdevelopment.

When Benjamin Netanyahu dug a spade here and in another West Bank settlement this week, some thought the Israeli Prime Minister was actually digging a hole into current United States-sponsored peace efforts.

After the wave of de-privatisation of water services facilities that started across the world two years ago, municipalities in Europe are now buying back the electricity utilities they sold to private investors in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This month’s trial of four pro-democracy activists in this major Vietnamese city has generated a flurry of online posts from concerned citizens seeking to express their sentiments against the country’s communist regime though knowing full well the risks involved.

New vaccination programmes against rotavirus are starting to have a positive impact, and could eventually prevent hundreds of thousands of child deaths a year, according to a new report.

Porfirio Lobo, who was sworn in Wednesday as president of Honduras, urged the people of his country and the international community to 'forget the past' and move ahead towards reconciliation.

With the Senate set to take up major sanctions legislation against Iran by mid-February, neo-conservative and other hawks are calling on the administration of President Barack Obama to pursue a more aggressive course of 'regime change' in Tehran.

The president of Iraq's Kurdistan region, Massoud Barzani, has expressed indirect support for the removal of Salih al-Mutlak and possibly other Sunni Arab politicians from a list of candidates banned from running in the March parliamentary elections.

In the societies of the future, young people may not start to work until the age of 25, there will be lifelong education for everyone, with university graduation as the starting point rather than the end goal, while working hours could be reduced to 12 hours a week for all.

The United Nations estimates that at least 40 percent of civil wars during the last 60 years have been fought either over natural resources - including diamonds, gold, timber, oil, gas, and cocoa - or sustained by revenues from rich minerals and commodities.