INDIA: Kashmir Clamours for Normalcy
As armed insurgency in India's northern Jammu and Kashmir ebbs, the elected state government is keen to hasten a return to normalcy by easing draconian security laws and reopening movie theatres and...
View ArticleEUROPE: Cranes Overstay Their Welcome as Weather Grows Warmer
Migrating flocks of cranes flying overhead are normally a harbinger of spring and autumn in Europe. But due to rising temperatures, the birds are sticking around increasingly longer in the fall before...
View ArticleSOUTH SUDAN: Refugees Reluctant to Move to Safety as War Looms
In the sprawling settlement of Yida, just south of the Sudan border, more than 20,000 people have gathered after fleeing battles in the country's Southern Kordofan state. But they now find themselves...
View Article'Walk the Busan Talk'
Women's rights champions are not prepared to let the dust settle on the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness that ended in this South Korean port city on Dec. 1 with the customary nod towards...
View ArticleQ&A: "'Sustainable Development' Is Often Used Gratuitously"
People are disillusioned with global conferences "that mobilise thousands of people and fail to achieve real global progress" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, says Boris Graizbord, head of the...
View ArticleU.N.'s First Official Report on Gays Notes Widespread Bias
In its first-ever official report on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, the United Nations confirms there is widespread discrimination based on sexual orientation or...
View ArticleIran Hedges Its Bets on Syria
Iran is courting the opposition to Syrian President Bashar al- Assad, seeking to maintain a crucial alliance in the event that Assad falls.
View ArticleSyrian Troops 'Ordered to Shoot to Kill'
More than 70 Syrian army commanders and officials have been named by former soldiers as having ordered attacks on unarmed protesters in that country, says the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch.
View ArticleChinese Village Besieged After Protests
A standoff between villagers and police is continuing in southern China, where police have sealed off the village of Wukan in an attempt to quell an uprising, witnesses say.
View ArticleU.S.: Iraq Intervention Ends with Scarcely a Whimper
When the United States formally ended its eight-and-a-half year military adventure in Iraq on Thursday with a flag-lowering ceremony presided over by Defence Secretary Leon Panetta Baghdad, hardly...
View ArticleU.S.: Protestors Condemn Mining Corporation Suing El Salvador
Protestors rallied in front of World Bank headquarters in Washington, D.C. today hoping to persuade a tribunal housed there to dismiss a case brought by Pacific Rim Mining Corporation against the...
View ArticleEU-India Deal Could Spell Disaster
As the Eighth Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) kicked off in Geneva this week, a group of NGOs exposed the devastating potential of a free trade agreement currently being...
View ArticleBURMA: Kachin Refugees Get UN Relief, Finally
Six months after fighting erupted between Burmese troops and ethnic Kachin separatists, international relief is finally trickling in for over 30,000 people who fled their homes near the snow-capped...
View ArticleMALAWI: Women's Education the Path to the Presidency
On an elegant veranda adorned with a red carpet, Malawi's Vice President Joyce Banda recalls how her childhood friend Chrissie Mtokoma was always top of their class and how she struggled to beat her....
View ArticleGUATEMALA: When Vigilante Protection Turns Ugly
"Masked men came and threatened us. Some information was distorted, and they wanted to attack us all," said Enrique Boj, an activist from San Juan Sacatepéquez, 31 km from the Guatemalan capital.
View ArticleHow Maliki and Iran Outsmarted the U.S. on Troop Withdrawal
Defence Secretary Leon Panetta's suggestion that the end of the U.S. troop presence in Iraq is part of a U.S. military success story ignores the fact that the George W. Bush administration and the...
View ArticleU.S.: Foreign Aid Spared Drastic Cuts for 2012
Despite the budget cutting and anti-U.N. frenzy that seized Republican lawmakers over the past year, U.S. foreign aid and support for multilateral institutions emerged in somewhat better shape than...
View ArticleDeath Penalty Returns to Haunt Afghanistan
While Afghanistan's violent decades-long war has claimed thousands of lives, the last known state-sanctioned execution was in June under the direct order of President Hamid Karzai.
View ArticleU.S.: Hundreds Rally in Support of Accused WikiLeaks Source
Hundreds of people gathered today outside a U.S. military base where evidence against Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking classified information to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks,...
View ArticleDeadly Gas Enters the Arab Spring
Activists across the Middle East are reporting a mysterious toxin, possibly a banned nerve agent, in the thick clouds of tear gas used by security forces to suppress anti-government protests in recent...
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