News headlines in January 2012, page 24

The acute lack of water in Kenya means families have to trek long distances every day to fetch water. In both rural and urban areas, people often walk as far as 30 kilometres or more to collect water from rivers, streams or wells. But thanks to self-help projects backed by NGOs, some communities are coming up with solutions.

Soma was a teenager in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif when her grandfather arranged her marriage to a husband she had never met. Brought up in a household with no father, Soma felt she had no choice when she underwent the traditional wedding ceremony and moved to her father-in-law’s home in Kabul to start a new life. But upon her arrival, she was shocked to learn she had been married to an eight-year-old boy, and was forced to work as a prostitute instead.

The so-called 'Arab Spring' led U.S. network television evening news coverage during 2011, comprising a total of about 10 percent of all the news coverage provided by the three major commercial networks during 2011, according to the latest annual review by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

On his upcoming visit to Cuba, Pope Benedict XVI will find a country immersed in dramatic changes, as it 'modernises' its socialist system and continues to open up to religion, marking a difference from the society found by John Paul II when he visited almost 14 years ago.

Africa’s top oil producer is on edge, poised to deter possible sectarian clashes between Muslims in the north and Christians in the south, while Christians are becoming more vulnerable to attacks from Islamist militants.

Kenyans entered the New Year with less pomp and colour that has characterised previous new year celebrations. Due to the harsh economic situation and the fact that it is time for most students to go back to school, many families shied away from entertainment places to save that elusive shilling for their school-going children.

Following another Islamist landslide in the second round of legislative polling, Egypt's first post-Mubarak parliament will likely see Islamist parties - especially the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) - calling the shots. While high-profile secular figures warn of looming 'theocracy', many local analysts believe an Islamist-led parliament won't make any radical legislative changes.

The multi-billion dollar Merowe Dam on the Nile River more than doubled Sudan's electricity supply, but its environmental impacts still remain unknown to the public and to the communities it affects.

'There's a big difference in the way indigenous people and mestizos (people of mixed ancestry) are treated. We are not paid the same wages for the same work,' Higinio Pu, an activist with the native group Waxaquib Noj, which means 'wisdom' in the Maya Quiché language, told IPS.

Kazakhstan, intent on diversifying its economy away from oil and mining, has extended its cereal acreage by a third in the past ten years, doubled the value of its grain harvest. It has eradicated rural poverty in the north, the country's breadbasket.