News headlines in January 2011, page 5

Over the years, the Kadars, a dwindling aboriginal tribe who live on the borders of the southern Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, have survived pestilences, extreme exploitation and even mass sterilisations. But a new government plan to build a hydroelectric dam across the Chalakudy River would have been the death knell for the group who now number about 1,500.

France’s high tariffs for solar-generated electricity have led to an investment boom in photovoltaic panels, but now the government is rowing back, much to the chagrin of environmentalists.

Suddenly faced with an unprecedented number of challenges across the Arab world, the administration of President Barack Obama is scrambling hard to keep up.

A dissident group in Cuba described the human rights situation in the country as 'very unfavourable,' although it recognised that the number of people prosecuted or imprisoned for 'political motivations' has gone down in the last 12 months.

The three African states in which political crises have recently erupted — Côte d’Ivoire, Niger and Tunisia — all feature a strong French economic presence as well as close military and political ties to the former European colonial power, with France at times playing a protective role towards elites accused of abuses.

Earlier this month, on a hot and humid day in the Jambi province of Indonesia, a group of local farmers was critically injured after being shot as they attempted to harvest fruit on a contested palm plantation.

The high popularity levels of their predecessors smoothed the way for Cristina Fernández and Dilma Rousseff to become presidents of Argentina and Brazil. But they also share the challenge of governing the two biggest countries in South America's Mercosur trade bloc, in the shadow of the leaders who went before them.

The world's Muslim population will increase by 35 percent in the next 20 years, according to new estimates by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The lifting of the state of emergency that has been in force in Algeria for nearly 20 years has emerged as a rallying point for groups united for democratic change.