News headlines in January 2012, page 21

My first encounter with the "shadow" financial system was half a century ago in Nigeria. Fresh out of Harvard Business School, I was starry-eyed with hope that the free-market economy would help this newly independent country thrive. Instead, in only a matter of months, I became witness to a system of financial manipulations so incredible that I still have trouble believing it is real, writes Raymond Baker, director of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development.

It is hard to see how the European Union and the euro can find their way out of the imbroglio their leaders have led themselves, and all Europeanists, into, writes Mario Soares, ex-president and ex-prime minister of Portugal.

South-South and triangular cooperation, backed by adequate funding, are key tools for tackling the development challenges of our time. But South-South cooperation only complements and does not replace North-South cooperation. All such partnerships are particularly pertinent given the challenges facing our global economy and sustainable development, writes Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, Ambassador from Qatar and current President of the United Nations General Assembly.

For much of last year world politicians and market watchers dreamed of China coming to the rescue of a stumbling global economy while Beijing mandarins sat on the fence fretting about high inflation and social instability inside their country. As China prepares to greet the Year of the Dragon later this month, many predict more gloom and doom, and some are expecting that the battle to stave off recession will be fought closer to home.

'During hard times, we have survived off olive oil,' says Ahmed Sourani from the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee. 'During the last war many people who couldn’t leave their homes had only bread and olive oil to sustain them for long periods.'

Alec Marembo has built his family fortune making bricks in Dzivarasekwa, a sprawling high-density suburb north of the capital of Zimbabwe. But due to the economic crisis of the last decade, his fortune started crumbling. Although he could break even when the downturn started, he finally gave in to competition from the Chinese.

Voters in Taiwan’s upcoming presidential and national legislative elections will also decide the fate of a bitterly controversial 9.3 billion dollar nuclear power plant.

Among its Central Asian neighbours, China these days is more often feared than loved. This attitude is perhaps most apparent in Kyrgyzstan, where despite an overwhelming dependence on Chinese imports, Chinese-owned malls and mining pits have been the subject of attacks in recent years; nationalist editorials in the local press play on fears of the Middle Kingdom.

The closure of Mexico's biggest garbage dump has highlighted the absence of a comprehensive policy for urban waste collection, disposal and processing, a failure that has serious consequences for health and the environment.

Maya Stella, a restaurant manager in the capital of Cameroon, no longer uses plastic to wrap the corn-fufu that she sells to her customers. She now uses banana or plantain leaves instead, because these are 'natural and it is our African culture to use leaves in wrapping food.'