News headlines in 2008, page 14

A new poll by WorldPublicOpinion.org conducted in 21 nations around the world finds widespread opposition to the United States maintaining naval forces based in the Persian Gulf.

The disastrous state of the Icelandic banking system means that Icelandic energy and aluminium companies can no longer find willing overseas lenders as before.

Located along white sand beaches on the north coast of the lush Samana peninsula, this is the latest Dominican boom town. Entering the town from across the high mountains, developers' signs are perched on the steep hills, with prices in dollars, promising a piece of paradise.

Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think tank analysts is, 'Yes, but...'

With the assistance of experts from Bolivia, indigenous communities in the northeastern Argentine province of Chaco are learning how to make films, as a means of helping the rest of the world understand their way of life and the problems they face.

A nurse at Baquba General Hospital asked Ahmed Ali, who co-authored this report, for a bribe to look after his sick baby. It was hardly an exceptional demand. Patients around Iraq have begun commonly to speak of the need to bribe medical staff to get some form of care.

Climate experts meeting in Poznan, Poland, promised to create a new pot of carbon-credit gold for the rural poor as guardians of rural lands and forests.

Almost a year after his party suffered its third consecutive electoral defeat, Abhisit Vijjajiva rode to victory to become Thailand’s new prime minister, the third this year. It was not a choice of the voters, though.

The image of a single, homogeneous Cuba is increasingly the stuff of dreams. The single-party, command-economy socialist island of the Caribbean with a monolithic society and politics is giving way to a Cuba of social diversity moving towards a plurality that would have been unimaginable twenty years ago, writes Leonardo Padura, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

After achieving human development indices that approach developed country standards, people living on this verdant strip facing the Arabian sea are attempting a ‘back-to-basics’ return to paddy cultivation.