News headlines in 2011, page 203

On an unusually hot Belgian afternoon, Thoko Kaime, leans back in his chair and explains how ‘township’ actually means ‘slum’ in his home country of Malawi.

Municipal workers across the United States are fighting to preserve their pensions amidst a concerted campaign by corporate interests coupled with budget shortfalls facing all urban areas in the current recession.

Fuchsia, green and turquoise yarn shuttles swiftly across the wooden loom Dora Huancahuari has learned to use. Together with other craftswomen, she has started a small weaving business which is helping to rebuild their lives in this remote, poverty-stricken Andean community torn by Peru's history of armed conflict.

As protests persist in Syria, the economy is becoming an increasing concern for many, who wonder if it will eventually falter in light of the recent unrest.

Seventy-five-year-old Verdiana Protas is worried that the 20 cattle she bought with her pension money will soon die because the 10-kilometre-long river in her village in northwest Tanzania has been dry for two years now and finding alternative sources of water is getting more and more difficult.

Mark Bowden, United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia, urged an effective response to the rapidly deteriorating situation in the African country. 'If we are not able to respond rapidly, there will be many more lives lost as result of malnutrition,' Bowden said on Wednesday at the United Nations.

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders, including the new Haitian President Michel Martelly, will gather here Friday for their annual summit as impatience grows with an array of stalled regional integration initiatives.

After decades of being relegated to the sidelines, Japan’s fledging renewable energy industry is now basking in the limelight as the nation struggles to cope with the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Egypt has cancelled plans to borrow 3 billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund because of conditions that violated the country’s national sovereignty and a public outcry that warned against terms that were blamed for impoverishing many Egyptians.

'We are in a multi-polar world now,' Robert Gates told a Washington Post columnist within a year of his taking over the Pentagon in early 2007.