News headlines in January 2011, page 16

In 'The Shah', a prominent Iranian author and scholar at Stanford University in the United States offers new insights into Iran's modern history, including the 1953 coup, the revolution a quarter century later, and the current repressive political situation.

The cholera epidemic ravaging Haiti has affected even this small southern border town, which lived primarily from the trade with its neighbour even though it counts for less than five percent of the cross-border market trade.

The Cuban government welcomed the latest U.S. measures to ease restrictions on travel and remittances to this country, but said they had a 'limited reach.'

In discussions of human activities that affect the climate, there is relatively little talk about alterations in rainfall patterns, despite the enormous implications that such changes have on human survival.

The Cuban capital was the venue for a new round of immigration talks between delegations from this Caribbean island nation and the United States, although no major progress towards a broader dialogue is expected, in contrast to the hopes raised when President Barack Obama took office.

A new initiative to support production of renewable energy in Mauritius may provide a model for other countries to follow suit. 'We have got so much sunshine here,' says Andrea Gungadin, rector of the Hindu Girls College, a private educational institution in Curepipe, southern Mauritius. 'Why allow it to go waste when we can use it to produce electricity at a time when fossil fuel is becoming scarcer and more expensive?'

On December 25, a female suicide bomber, not more than 18 years of age, blew herself up killing at least 47 people and injuring 105 others.

San Martín is one of the three most deforested Amazon regions in Peru. But now local residents and non-governmental organisations have joined with local and regional authorities to defend the flora, fauna and water resources and halt the destruction of the rainforests.

Guyana became Thursday the seventh Latin American state to recognise an independent Palestinian state. Although the official recognitions are largely nominal, they have irked the State of Israel as they expose its growing diplomatic isolation in the face of the current peace deadlock.

Winter in the Indian capital is a season of mists, minus the mellow fruitfulness. The air becomes charged with toxic emissions and particles that cannot disperse due to a meteorological phenomenon called 'atmospheric inversion'.