News headlines in 2011, page 185

As South Sudan was admitted as the 193rd member of the United Nations on Thursday, officials in Washington said the hard work in the fragile new country has just begun.

A growing number of people around the world believe that China will eventually surpass the United States as the world's premier superpower, if it hasn't already, according to the latest survey of 22 countries released here Thursday by the Pew Global Attitudes Project.

'We started out with 10 organisations and now we have 22 cooperatives with more than 19,000 members who grow and export crops with an environmental, social and economic focus,' says an enthusiastic Marvin López, with the Guatemalan network of small-scale fair trade farmers (CGCJ).

The United States should recognise Brazil as a global power and treat it accordingly, concluded a major new report issued by the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) here this week.

After six years of protracted negotiations, a largely sceptical international community is moving towards readying a long outstanding global Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) for signature by July next year.

Even before he was hired as spokesman for the Wikileaks whistleblower web site in July 2010, 49-year-old investigative journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson realised that the new initiative would have the power to bring about transformations simply by informing society, starting in his own country, Iceland.

The big question looming over U.S.-Iraqi negotiations on a U.S. military presence after 2011 is what game Shi'a leader Moqtada al-Sadr is playing on the issue.

While Americans are taking sides in the ongoing battle about the future of American healthcare, one underrepresented group is especially vulnerable to the change - or lack of change - that may be afoot: the homeless community.

Hastimal Sen mistook the deafening sounds of explosions that shook his office in Mumbai’s crowded Zaveri Bazaar Wednesday evening as cars backfiring.

'Ecuador will not wait ad infinitum' for a decision by the international community, and 'at the end of the year' President Rafael Correa will decide whether to extract oil that was to have been left underground at the Yasuní nature reserve, non-renewable natural resources minister Wilson Pástor has announced.