News headlines in January 2012, page 9

'I had to fight to be treated like a human, not animal,' dissident Nikolai Avtukhovich wrote from prison. Last month Avtukhovich, Belarusian political activist and entrepreneur, convicted to five years in the penal colony for illegal storage of five cartridges for a hunting rifle, cut his veins.

In the ward of a partially destroyed clinic, Mangiro (who did not give his last name) sat on a bed next to his wounded nine-year-old daughter, Ngathin. The little girl is fortunate, she survived the recent inter-ethnic clashes in Pibor county that killed her mother and sisters.

The Cuban government energetically rebutted what it regards as another campaign to discredit it, following the death in prison of a man who, according to the authorities, was not a dissident nor on hunger strike, as the opposition alleges.

The Caribbean nation of Haiti, still struggling to recover from the devastating 2010 earthquake, is once again trying to cope with the sexual abuse of minors by U.N. peacekeepers - for the third time in five years.

As China sees its influence continue to grow in this part of the world, a delegation from the United Kingdom arrived in Grenada last weekend with a proverbial carrot for its former colonies, vowing to create new opportunities for trade, investment and innovation 'in our respective economies'.

'It's extremely serious, a full-blown environmental catastrophe,' environmentalist Sara Larrain told IPS, describing the impact of the fire that has been raging through the Torres del Paine National Park in Chilean Patagonia since Dec. 27.

As he dismantles a 50-year military dictatorship without a shot being fired, Burmese President Thein Sein is resorting to the political art of compromise.

For more than a week, thousands have been demonstrating in cities across Romania. Participants from all walks of life bring to the fore the broadest array of demands in what looks like a celebratory discovery of street protest. The main call is against lack of transparency and accountability in decision-making.

Yumi Goto, 60, lives with her husband in a temporary shelter on a windy hill that overlooks vast stretches of tsunami-devastated seacoast where her home was once located.

Several revolutionary groups are calling for mass demonstrations against military rule on Wednesday to coincide with the first anniversary of the January 25 uprising that ultimately toppled the Mubarak regime. But many express doubt the event will succeed in replicating last year's revolutionary fervour on the part of the masses, most of whom express a desire for stability and a smooth transition to democratic governance above all else.