News headlines in 2011, page 83

The one thing that a quarter century of civil war has taught the local population in the north of the island is how to make the best use of local resources - starting with plain sunshine.

Libya's governing National Transitional Council (NTC) is holding about 2,500 detainees in the capital Tripoli alone, many of whom have been beaten and subjected to other ill- treatment and not given access to lawyers or judicial proceedings, says London-based human-rights watchdog Amnesty International.

Violent clashes in Cairo that left at least 25 Egyptians dead and over 300 injured on Sunday have deepened suspicions that unseen forces are manipulating the country's sectarian divisions for political gain.

'Gun city' lies just a 40-minute drive from Peshawar, capital of the troubled Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The city, Darra Adamkhel, lives off a thriving trade in making and selling guns.

The three landmark deals between the United States and trading partners South Korea, Colombia and Panama approved by the U.S. Congress late Wednesday represented the largest free trade agreements in the U.S. since 1994 and the first free trade agreement made by the U.S. since 2007.

One day after a nation-wide poll found strong popular support for the United Nations, Republicans on a key Congressional foreign policy committee Thursday voted to cut U.S. funding for the world body if it did not implement major changes.

While the administration of Barack Obama vows to hold the Iranian government 'accountable' for the alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington, the legal document describing evidence in the case provides multiple indications that it was mainly the result of an FBI 'sting' operation.

On the face of it, the sudden release of political prisoners in Burma would appear a triumph for the sanctions regime imposed on the Southeast Asian nation by Western governments.

In May 2011, Brazilian journalist Natália Garcia decided to spend one year travelling to different cities around the world to better understand how to make urban landscapes more liveable for inhabitants.

Degradation of land is the world's quiet crisis, undercutting food production, increasing water scarcity, impoverishing hundreds of millions of people and affecting two billion overall. Nearly 20 million square kilometres of the earth's arable lands — an area twice the size of Canada — have already been degraded.