News headlines in December 2011, page 2

Weaning Afghanistan’s poppy farmers away from growing the raw material for the bulk of the world’s illicit heroin has never been easy, but Kashmir’s saffron cultivators may have the answer.

Serbia saw the first rehabilitation of a member of its royal family earlier this month, in a move by the supreme court described by historians as 'deeply moral' and necessary - for generations who remember the Karadjordjevics as well as those who have learned about them from the history books.

Only seven prisoners convicted of political crimes are among the nearly 3,000 inmates pardoned by the government of Raúl Castro. Most of the prisoners have reportedly already been released.

Hounded by the economic crisis that shows no signs of letting up and by political leaders of all stripes, Portugal's conservative Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho sent out an unprecedented message to his fellow citizens: emigrate.

Mama Rosalie of Damas quarter in the capital of Cameroon trudges down a narrow, winding footpath, headed for a narrow stream running far below, a 20-litre water container in her right hand.

In the latest efforts to mitigate the hazards associated with climate change, the Jamaican authorities are turning their attention to Negril, where decades of unplanned development is destroying the local ecosystem and eroding the famous beach.

The Peruvian government will propose that the Organisation of American States review the powers of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and is seeking the support of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela. The move is a reaction against a lawsuit brought against it by the IACHR.

For the last ten years, environmentalists and marine biologists have repeatedly warned that the world’s tuna populations, and particularly bluefin tuna, are being overfished to the verge of extinction.

Activists voice concern that Afghan women’s rights continue to be marginalised, and nowhere is gender inequality more starkly illustrated than in the country’s flawed justice system.

The sun never shone brighter on rural Bangladesh with low power solar systems transforming the lives of tens of millions of marginalised rural people who are unconnected to the national grid.