News headlines in 2011, page 55

The path of reconciliation in former Yugoslavia has taken a musical turn, as the philharmonic orchestras of Ljubljana, Zagreb and Belgrade team up for their first joint season since 1991.

They should be weary of each other. The historical conflict between their ethnicities has resulted in Africa’s largest genocide. But Claude Kayitare sits on the verandah of a popular Johannesburg restaurant, chatting to his friend, Theogene Nshimyimana. It seems an easy friendship, a sight that does not raise eyebrows in South Africa, but it took years for mutual distrust and suspicion to move towards friendship.

Crowds of women waving coupons worth two kilograms of beef line the stairwell to Secours Islamique France’s Gaza City office several hours before the aid agency begins its meat distribution for Eid. Aid workers struggle to climb the stairs, hauling large bags of fresh meat to assist impoverished families in Gaza this holiday season.

A new report on Iran's nuclear programme provides substantial evidence that Iran carried out extensive research into how to make a nuclear weapon prior to 2003 but is shaky about how much work has continued.

More than 5,000 Haitian cholera victims are seeking compensation, action and an apology from the U.N. and the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) for the ongoing epidemic that has killed more than 6,600 Haitians and sickened more than 476,000 since October 2010.

The Brazilian government is extending its fight against hunger to the world stage, by inaugurating a Centre of Excellence Against Hunger to transmit its positive experiences to other developing countries with the help of United Nations agencies.

Reinventing the United Nations is crucial to protect the poorest inhabitants of the planet, at a time when the global economic crisis, the effects of climate change, and food insecurity are undermining development efforts.

Sixteen-year-old Noor Bano believes nothing short of a revolution will convince the men in Malangabad — her remote village in the Khairpur district of the Sindh province, some 460 kilometres from the southern port city of Karachi — to treat women as equals.

Liberians headed to the polls in what appeared to be modest numbers Tuesday morning for a presidential runoff that has been marred by an opposition boycott and the deaths of at least two demonstrators at an opposition rally.

DNA analysis, ethical tribunals and diplomatic pressure are the new instruments that migrants' organisations are wielding to combat the abuses suffered by undocumented migrants in Mexico and the United States.