News headlines in 2011, page 91

A firm call for African Union member states to impose sanctions against Morocco until it abides by the United Nations mandate that affirms the people of Western Sahara's right to self-determination was made at the Pan African Parliament proceedings.

When Burma’s new president, Thein Sein, took the unusual step of opposing the construction of one of China's largest investment projects in the country — a mega dam — he did more than acknowledge the concerns of local communities and environmental activists.

Cuba marked the 35th anniversary of the bombing of a Cubana airlines jet, in which 73 people were killed, with demonstrations against terrorism and a demand for the release of five government agents in prison in the United States.

'For the loans that we had taken seven to ten years back from microfinance institutions (MFIs), not us, but they MFIs must refund us half the loan amount, because they have taken repayment two times over with interest, that too', says 32-year-old Vijaya Kasipati, who lives in the village of Lachapet in Southern Indian State of Andhra Pradesh.

The poorest countries in Africa are not merely the victims of natural calamities. They are also ravaged by the continued denial of market access as promised in the Doha trade negotiations, say African trade diplomats.

At present, the armies of many countries, including my own, continue to occupy Haiti. How was this military invasion justified? By claiming that Haiti was a danger to international security. Nothing new there, writes Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist and author of ''The Open Veins of Latin America'', 'Memories of Fire'' and "Mirrors/An Almost Universal History".

A neutron bomb is falling on the rich countries. It destroys the people while leaving the infrastructure standing. Nowadays, the main infrastructure of the North is not companies, highways or agriculture: it’s finance. In the US, it is already being said that this is the lost decade. Hopefully it will only be a single decade, writes Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the news agency Inter Press Service (IPS).

Rather than taking any action to address the situation and terrified by recent drops on the stock exchanges, governments are bending over backwards to coddle the markets when what they should do is disarm them and make them submit to strict regulation. How long can we continue to allow financial speculation to set the terms for political representation? What is democracy for, after all? What is the use of voting when the markets dictate what the government should do? asks Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde diplomatique en espanol.

There are clear indications that the world is moving away from capital punshment: the legal abolition of the sanction in recent years in many states of the US -which saw a drop in executions from 52 in 2009 to 46 in 2010-, the drop that is apparently occurring in China, the reduction in the number of capital offenses in China and Vietnam, and the thousands of death sentences commuted in Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Burma, writes Emma Bonino, Vice president of the Italian Senate and a leader of the Radical Party.

'First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you — then you win,' a middle-aged man yells into the microphone from a makeshift stage erected at the far end of Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC.