News headlines in 2011, page 62

'It's great news' that the Colombian government is studying the cancellation of mining titles that have been granted in protected areas and in border zones declared national security areas, anthropologist Martín von Hildebrand, director of the Gaia Amazonas Foundation, told Tierrramérica.

The United Nations unveiled its 22nd annual Human Development Report on Wednesday, with grave warnings that unless countries take action against climate change and implement sustainable solutions, progress in human development will be in serious jeopardy.

'A crossroads of history, continents and ancient empires; a place where history comes alive through the extraordinary monuments on its shores', reads a well- known tourist guidebook about Libya. It’s all still there, but the tourists aren’t there to see it.

Several major new dams are being constructed on the Niger River. It's a positive sign of growing investment in agriculture and energy, but it also has some observers worried.

Just six years after the completion of a dike that raised the level of the northern part of the Aral Sea by two metres and slashed its salt content by two-thirds, this remote Central Asian lake once synonymous with ecological catastrophe has become a model of environmental recovery.

Harsh austerity measures and a struggling economy have given birth to the ‘new poor’ in Athens, a term used to describe those suffering the impacts of social exclusion and rapidly shrinking civic welfare institutions.

Washington's failure to gain Iraqi approval for a significant U.S. military presence in that country beyond December could make it harder for Afghanistan to agree to a similar deployment beyond 2014.

Mountains of hazardous waste grow by about 40 million tons every year. This waste, mostly from Europe and North America, is burned in developing countries like Ghana in a hazardous effort to recover valuable metals.

Amina Shakir (not her real name) fled the drought and famine in Somalia for a better life in Kenya. But she did so illegally, placing her faith in the hands of a criminal network headed by Mukhalis or agents in Swahili. In the end her faith was misplaced as she was 'sold' into employment upon finally reaching Kenya.

When the G20 leaders meet for their fifth summit in Cannes, France, on Thursday, they will be confronted with several worsening global economic and trade issues. Among them is how to strengthen the international trading system and how to overcome the developmental deficit that continues to create an uneven playing field for poor countries.