News headlines in 2010, page 375

Diamonds haven't been among the first concerns at the World Social Forum these last 10 years. But through the recession and the still tottering recovery, a new sparkle in that business is pointing the way to a brighter world that is also better in a WSF sort of way.

Some signs are emerging of a new trend shown up by the recession: local governments (and the people) are going one way, national ones another.

The agreed, if dubious, solution to the financial crisis was to get people and governments - in the richer countries - to borrow more in order to spend more. What is not in doubt is the growing numbers of people who will be able to neither borrow nor spend.

Ten-year-old Tembuso Magagula sat outside her classroom with her shoulders hunched against the cold today, tears streaming from her eyes. Her long-awaited first day of school had turned into a nightmare.

A decision by Iraq's controversial Accountability and Justice Commission (AJC) Monday to remove 59 candidates from a list of over 500 candidates banned from running in the March parliamentary elections appears to be a sign that the AJC is softening its stance following widespread domestic opposition and a visit by U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden to Baghdad last week.

Counter-narcotics and counterinsurgency often go hand-in-hand in Afghanistan, where the opium poppy trade bankrolls much of the Taliban's operations and greases political corruption.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's very cautiously-worded support for a negotiated settlement with the Taliban leadership in an interview published Monday is only the first public signal of a policy decision by the Barack Obama administration to support a political settlement between the Hamid Karzai regime and the Taliban, an official of McChrystal's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) command has revealed in an interview with IPS.

As Iran nervously awaits the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution on Feb. 11 - the day that has traditionally drawn the largest public demonstrations - a subtle change in public discourse can be detected.

Some 300 women a year die in Argentina of complications during pregnancy, childbirth or the postpartum period, from largely preventable causes. Many of the deaths result from unsafe abortions.

As the global financial crisis triggered alarms across Asia, Singapore responded with a government programme to aid its vulnerable workforce. The affluent city- state pumped in three billion U.S. dollars in an employment protection programme.