News headlines in 2011, page 7

The small restaurants and shops selling plastic sandals, tacky umbrellas, kitchen wares and paper lanterns in Buenos Aires's Chinatown do not give the impression of impending economic dominance.

Japan’s nuclear power industry, which once ignored opposition, now finds its existence threatened by women angered by official opaqueness on radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was struck by an earthquake- driven tsunami on Mar. 11.

After Colombia's attorney general announced that she was bringing charges against a former government peace commissioner for his role in a staged surrender of a fake guerrilla unit, he called for an investigation of her husband — which she promptly ordered.

For the last two decades, U.S. administrations have come in like a lion and out like a lamb with their policies on North Korea. Determined to demonstrate Washington's resolve, U.S. presidents have played hardball with Pyongyang in an effort to precipitate regime change or at least bully the intransigent country into knuckling under.

Research and development, unlike other branches of productive activity, is resisting the ravages of one of the worst financial and economic crises to affect the world in the last 80 years.

Rules allowing Cubans to buy and sell cars and homes, and now, to take out loans, are two of the latest steps taken to 'modernise' the economy.

The leaders of South America's Mercosur trade bloc decided to set up a committee to facilitate the incorporation of new members, adopt a mechanism to defend democracy in case of a coup, and ban vessels from the Malvinas/Falkland Islands from docking in member countries' ports.

Electronics are at the top of many holiday gift lists in the U.S. this season, but some of those products could be made using minerals from areas of the world where conflicts have led to widespread human rights abuses.

Argentina could meet part of the rising world demand for 'rare earth' metals, required for a variety of green technologies, advanced electronic devices and medical diagnostic equipment. The challenge lies in mining them in a sustainable fashion.

There are times when Thiyagarajah Santhirakumaran, 35, wishes that he had died in Sri Lanka’s civil war. There is peace now, but with both his legs blown off by a shell he has little to look forward to except a life of dependency.