News headlines in January 2011, page 18

These are scenes Western powers would have loved to see in Iran - thousands of young people braving live bullets and forcing an autocratic ruler out of the country. But it is in the North African nation Tunisia where an uprising forced the Western-backed autocratic President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country.

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.

In an emotionally charged meeting this week sponsored by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, fishermen, Gulf residents and community leaders vented their increasingly grave concerns about the widespread health issues brought on by the three-month-long disaster.

Brígido rocks slowly back and forth while José Guadalupe, a Catholic priest, says mass at the Atlampa Centre for Social Assistance and Integration (CAIS) in Mexico City. Suddenly, he begins to bang his head against the wall, startling the people around him.

Wednesday's collapse of the government of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri adds to the growing list of challenges faced by the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama across the Middle East.

In Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's eight years as president of Brazil, he signed decrees creating just 88 indigenous reserves, far fewer than his immediate predecessors. That figure comes from the governmental National Indian Foundation and the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), which also reported that violence against, and among, indigenous communities increased under the Lula administration.

Authorities in remote Xinjiang province rescued a group of mentally ill men last month. The men had been sold by a shelter operator and forced to work in a factory. The rescue shone a light on the darkest side of China’s rapid economic growth — slavery.

Following the approval of a restrictive media law that led to widespread domestic and international condemnation, Hungarian society is trying to come to terms with the broader consequences of the country’s alleged descent into authoritarianism.

Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev signed a large number of contracts with India during a two-day visit to New Delhi in December. These deals were part of a series of agreements that have placed India in progressively more advantageous positions in global arms markets.

The reported arrests of ten Congolese soldiers accused of looting stores and raping at least a dozen women in the Fizi District earlier in January is not enough to reassure local civil society.