News headlines in 2011, page 92

Garbage pickers, emaciated dogs and carrion birds alike all hunt for items of value at the Cambalache garbage dump, before they have to give way to the smouldering fire that burns up to 900 tonnes of waste a day in the open air, spreading its smoke over Ciudad Guayana in northeastern Venezuela.

When Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently addressed the U.N. General Assembly on the impact of migration on development, he counted himself as one of 214 million international migrants who live outside their home countries.

Dissension over Adm. Mike Mullen's accusation that the Haqqani network of Afghan insurgents is a 'veritable arm' of Pakistan's intelligence agency and the revelation that a U.S. official met with a Haqqani official have provided new evidence of a long-simmering struggle within the Barack Obama administration over how to deal with the most effective element of the Afghan resistance to U.S.-NATO forces.

It seems all of Liberia is paying close attention to the campaign for the Oct. 11 presidential and legislative elections. But Sekou Camara is one exception.

Indigenous children in the southwestern Colombian province of Cauca do not know what peace is. For the government forces and the leftwing guerrillas, the territory of the Nasa people is a strategic battleground.

Emmanuel Joseph and George Amoah, two disabled Ghanaians, occupy different ends of the spectrum. The former lies on a piece of cardboard in Accra Central, his half-naked body twisted and mostly paralysed, the sun beating down on him while he waits to collect three dollars, the average proceeds of a day’s begging.

Al-Shabaab has vowed to carry out more attacks in Mogadishu following a vehicle bomb blast that killed scores of people in the Somali capital.

Men and women wading through waist-deep water with infants straddling their sides; a convoy of donkey carts laden with entire families’ possessions moving towards dry land; people being rescued by uniformed men in rubber boats; ailing elderly carried on rope cots; bird’s-eye views of vast tracts of land submerged under water.

U.S. President Barack Obama has decided to impose diplomatic rather than trade sanctions on Iceland because of the country’s whale-hunting activities.

Foreign aid could be one of the first items on the chopping block as the United States struggles to address trillion- dollar deficits in the coming fiscal years, a fate U.S. international development agency officials are trying hard to avoid.