News headlines in December 2011

Four months after her murder, you can see Rosy Maharjan flashing the two- finger victory sign - from a Facebook page. With police arresting the 21-year- old’s boyfriend and the people he hired to kill her due to jealousy, agitated civil society members have opened accounts on social networking sites, demanding justice for the slain college student.

Commandos embedded in a pristine touristic resort bordering Egypt and Jordan sounds unreal? Though theirs are borders of peace, it appears Israel’s best defence against would-be Islamist militants isn’t just a good fence. Crack fighters might help make better neighbours. And, better tourism.

With vehicles and donkey carts packed with their belongings, Somalis are returning, four years after they fled, to their partially standing, bullet-scarred and mortar-shelled neighbourhoods in former Al-Shabaab controlled areas of Mogadishu.

Promoting the first Men for Non-Violence platform is one of the challenges undertaken by a group of social actors who devoted November and December 2011 to the most intensive Cuban campaign ever against gender-based violence.

While the Swazi economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, the government is banking on the future by providing funds to help young people set up businesses.

Using hybridisation and selective breeding, researchers in Nigeria have developed three new yellow varieties of cassava, a staple crop in much of Africa, which they say will help fight malnutrition caused by vitamin A deficiency in the region.

When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the 193- member General Assembly in September, the rapturous welcome he received implicitly indicated the vibrant support for U.N. recognition of Palestine - if not in the Security Council, at least in the organisation's highest policy making body.

Civil liberties groups and many citizen activists are outraged over language in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 (NDAA) that appears to lay the legal groundwork for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial.

As the new year rolls in, Honduras is feeling more than ever the challenges posed by soaring rates of violent crime, police corruption, the penetration of the police by organised crime, and a wave of selective killings of journalists and experts in the fight against drugs.

Thanks to soaring oil prices and new technology, oil producers in the hot sands of Arabia, the torrid Niger delta or the humid plains of the Orinoco are facing new competition from rivals in the frozen North.