News headlines in January 2012, page 22

Last month the first cargo train crossed the ‘Friendship Bridge’ from Uzbekistan to the border town Hairatan in northern Afghanistan, and rolled along 75 kilometres of newly laid track to Mazar-e-Sharif.

Capping a major eight-month review, President Barack Obama unveiled a new defence strategy here Thursday that places more emphasis on U.S. military capabilities in Asia and the Pacific and much less on counter-insurgency and nation-building operations in poorer and conflict-plagued countries.

Amadou* takes in a long, deep breath, clears his throat and steps to the front of the room. He turns to look out at a familiar group of faces sitting on long wooden benches here at the Camp Penal maximum-security prison in Dakar. This is the last in a group of 150 inmates Amadou has been speaking with today. He’s tired, but remains focused.

Police fired tear gas and beat protesters to force them out of a square they had occupied in an overnight sit-in in Nigeria's northern city of Kano as part of demonstrations over soaring fuel prices, an organiser said.

Small-scale dairy farmers in this remote area of Bolivia's northeastern Amazon region of Beni have a new hope for protecting their livestock from the fierce annual floods that start in December.

Women's rights groups are pinning their hopes on Roxana Baldetti, the first woman to be elected vice president of Guatemala, to boost the chances of increased female participation in politics.

Thomas Dlakama has experienced what he calls 'January disease' all his working life. This phenomenon afflicts millions in Zimbabwe, and its symptoms include an empty purse, rising blood pressure among irascible breadwinners, and a general inexplicable hope of manna from heaven.

Raids on the Cairo offices of civil society organisations accused of receiving unauthorised foreign funds are part of a wider campaign by Egypt’s ruling military council to silence its critics, say rights groups.

With floods, droughts and other calamities battering deltaic Bangladesh regularly, farmers need little prompting in switching to climate-resistant varieties of rice, wheat, pulses and other staples.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who 24 years ago performed dismally as the standard-bearer of the Libertarian Party, has begun making waves in the 2012 presidential campaign, to the extreme discomfort of neo-conservatives and aggressive nationalists who dominate the foreign policy rosters of most of his Republican rivals.