News headlines in 2011, page 63

A Bangladeshi humanitarian with a British knighthood - and head of one of the world's largest non-governmental organisations (NGOs) promoting the cause of education - walked way with half a million dollars in prize money and a gold medal at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in the Qatari capital of Doha.

When state legislator Marcelo Freixo received death threats for combating militias made up of off-duty police in Rio de Janeiro, his real life took on the form of the character portraying himself in the Brazilian Oscar hopeful 'Tropa de Elite 2'.

Oxfam and major aid donors of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (the DAC) are often on opposite sides of the fence. Today though, we are on the same side —making sure that effective aid lifts people out of poverty.

Berlin is a big capital city of a country famed for making excellent automobiles, but it can no longer afford roads and is now moving people by transit, bike and especially through walking.

Inspired by the ongoing Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in the United States, thousands of Japanese youth and workers, dissatisfied with growing unemployment and harsh working conditions in the world’s third largest economy, have taken to the streets to demand stable jobs and government reforms.

'The governments of Central America outline a number of requisites for access to housing, and people don't have the money to meet them,' says Roly Escobar, an activist with a Guatemalan movement of slum dwellers fighting for the right to decent housing.

'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.

Last week the European Commission unveiled its ‘Agenda for Change’, a new policy framework outlining priorities for the European Union’s development aid and detailing the Commission’s renewed focus on economic growth as a means of poverty reduction, particularly in the world’s poorest countries.

While some veterans of the Civil Rights Movement have joined forces with the Occupy Movement, other civil rights advocates, some of a new generation, have been more critical, even as the city government's response to the movement reached new levels.

The administration of President Barack Obama announced Monday that it would immediately cut U.S. funding for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, just hours after UNESCO's governing board voted overwhelmingly to grant Palestine full membership.