News headlines in 2011, page 93

For the second year in a row, U.S. President Barack Obama has waived a Congressionally-mandated ban on military aid for four countries that use child soldiers.

Silvio Leimig was 18 years old and had just earned his driver's licence when he visited Suape, a port 40 km from his home in Recife, the capital of the state of Pernambuco in Brazil's Northeast region, in the early 1980s.

Land degradation threatens populations and their livelihoods, driving food insecurity and decreasing productivity. Yet no comprehensive action has been taken to address this issue, and if none is taken now, degradation and all of its serious implications for the future will skyrocket, says a new study.

When Russia and China exercised a rare double veto against a Western resolution aimed at punishing Syria, the two big powers were repeating a similar feat derailing two earlier resolutions: one against Myanmar (Burma) in 2007 and the other against Zimbabwe in 2008.

A banking scandal, identified by Iranian authorities as the 'largest embezzlement in the country's banking history', has further shaken confidence in the government whose legitimacy was already under question after the contested results of the 2009 presidential election.

As Iran continues a slow march toward potential nuclear weapons capability, diplomatic action to contain the programme is likely to shift to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose director general, Yukiya Amano, has taken a harder line than his predecessor about alleged military research by Iran's nuclear scientists.

Over 100 years after the attempted extermination of Namibia’s indigenous men, women and children, 20 of the 300 skulls that had been stolen for racial research have finally returned home from Germany.

When Aisha Diis* and her five children fled their home in Somalia seeking aid from the famine devastating the region, she could not have known the dangers of the journey, or even fathom that she would be raped along the way.

Like the biblical plagues of Egypt, 10 calamities have fallen in recent years on the previously flourishing basic industries of northeastern Venezuela, such as iron and steel, aluminium and hydroelectricity.

The deserts of northern Mexico are home to various plant species that have been largely ignored, despite the considerable social, economic and environmental contributions they could make.