News headlines in January 2011, page 26

'We try to be happy and celebrate with our families during Christmas, but the atmosphere is not cheery as in other parts of the world,' says Hossam Tawwil. And as around Christmas on Dec. 25, so for Orthodox Christians preparing to celebrate Christmas Jan. 7.

The beaches of Egypt's Red Sea resort city of Sharm al-Sheikh are tentatively back to normal after having recently been the site of five separate shark attacks, one of which proved fatal. While the phenomenon's precise cause remains undetermined, local experts fear that the spate of attacks could have dire consequences for Egypt's vital tourism industry - especially in the event of another incident.

Environmentalists are engaged in a nation-wide campaign to protect what is left of the agricultural belt in Bahrain. Seventy percent of farms have been eliminated due to urbanisation, according to environmentalists who are warning of a serious environmental crisis.

Support for reproductive health legislation, popularly known as the RH Bill here, has snowballed on social websites and among peer networks, yet passage and funding of the bill remains uncertain. Catholic bishops have long used the threat of excommunication in the raging debates over use of modern contraceptive methods - such as pills, IUDs and condoms - in the Southeast-Asian nation of over 92 million, 85 percent of whom are Catholic.

Teenage commercial sex workers are finding themselves at the centre of the HIV/AIDS storm amid concerns of widespread lack of condom use and a spike in the number of infections among this demographic, despite the country’s continuing HIV/AIDS campaigns, which health authorities say has seen a drop in prevalence in the past few years.

The disastrous BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti, and the continuing war in Afghanistan comprised the major news stories in 2010, according to the latest annual review of network news coverage by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez began the new year with special powers to implement his '21st century socialism', while the opposition returned to the legislature Wednesday after a five-year absence.

Thanks to its experience with community forestry projects, Mexico can provide tips on how to manage forests while fomenting the development of local economies in 2011, the International Year of Forests.

'We want an independent country of our own that is Southern Sudan, and we want a new country'. Calm and with a passion in his voice, the secondary school teacher, John Kiri, a native from Juba explained the excitement he is feeling for Sunday’ referendum.