News headlines in 2012, page 4

ADDIS ABABA, Dic 24 (IPS) - Many of the fastest-growing countries in the world are in Africa, the poorest continent on the planet, but the potential for recently-discovered resources to generate broad-based inclusive development opportunities is massive and remains under-exploited.

ADDIS ABABA, Dic 23 (IPS) - Africa's smallholder farmers, who contribute 80 percent of food and agricultural production in sub-Saharan Africa and much of the world's food supply, are being encouraged by big business, governments and NGOs to become less subsistence based and more entrepreneurial by tailoring production to market forces.

SRINAGAR, Dic 23 (IPS) - Seventeen-year-old Afzal is an unusual orphan. Though his father died many years ago, his mother is still alive and living with Afzal's grandparents and younger siblings in a house not far from the orphanage where the boy has spent most of his teenage years.

MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka, Dic 23 (IPS) - The landscape in northern Sri Lanka's former war zone can change abruptly from the ordinary to the surreal.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India, Dic 22 (IPS) - Twenty-year-old Reshma, hailing from the village of Aryanad in the Thiruvananthapuram district of the South Indian state of Kerala, was forced to drop out of school early as a result of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

BEERSHEBA, Israel, Dic 22 (IPS) - As campaign posters pop up around Israel ahead of the country's upcoming parliamentary elections, Bedouin citizens of the state are still reeling after being denied the chance to elect their own local council representatives.

DAR ES SALAAM, Dic 22 (IPS) - A nurse working in a remote clinic in Mueda, a small town in northern Mozambique's Makonde Plateau, receives a shipment of vaccines from the national health department. Using special software on her mobile phone, she sends out a mass text message to alert mothers in the area about the availability of immunisations.

WASHINGTON, Dic 22 (IPS) - U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Massachusetts Senator John Kerry on Friday to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, calling him "the perfect choice to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead".

UNITED NATIONS, Dic 21 (IPS) - For more than two decades, the internationally beloved singer and human rights activist Yvonne Chaka Chaka has been at the forefront of the South African pop music scene.