This is a good moment to think ahead of topics and issues that I’d like to focus on for the coming year. I always do that informally, sort of mumbling to myself, but let me also invite your thoughts. I won’t promise to follow your suggestions, but I will read them and consider them.  In terms of travels, I’m planning trips this year to Sudan, Congo, China, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iran and North Korea (assuming I can get visas for the last two, which I think I can). And in continental Africa, the only countries I haven’t visited are Mauritania, Lesotho, Malawi and Angola, so I’d love to shorten that list (although Angola pretty much doesn’t give journalists visas). In South America, the only countries I haven’t visited are Chile, Paraguay, Guyana and Suriname — so I might try to figure out a way to get to some of those. There’s some risk of a new war between Israel and Lebanon, and so those countries (and of course Gaza and the West Bank) may be on my itinerary as well. And other places will pop up, and then there’s my win-a-trip journey with a student and a person over 60. Apply now if you haven’t – the deadline is in less than three weeks. And spread the word if you know someone who should apply.  I’ll continue to explore issues of poverty at home and abroad. One reader a while back suggested writing about Indian reservations, as an aspect of poverty that never gets much attention, and that’s an excellent idea that I’d like to take up. I’ll continue to write about human trafficking, but perhaps more about it at home than abroad. And I know I’ll continue to write about women’s empowerment and education, because they seem to me the most effective ways to overcome poverty at home and abroad.  In the last couple of years, I’ve been writing a fair amount about chemicals and the food system, including endocrine disruptors. I’ll do more of that this year as well, and I have an interest in science and psychology that I hope will find expression in my column as well. Ditto for religion.  So that’s my very loose and incomplete agenda for 2011. What am I missing? I’m particularly looking for issues of global significance: for example, if I go to Suriname, it won’t be to write about Suriname as such but about a global problem that exists there. And I’m looking for issues that people aren’t really thinking about but that if they were, things would change. In other words, if I can shine my spotlight on an issue, then change may come about. So fire away with your suggestions.
Enlisting readers! I'm too lazy to come up with all my own column topics for 2011, so give me a hand.