Eighteen-year-old Mona Al-Ashkar says she did not immediately know the first explosion at the United Nations (UN) school in Beit Lahiya had blown her left leg off. There was smoke, then chaos, then the pain and disbelief set in once she realised it was gone - completely severed by the weapon that hit her.

A key parliamentary by-election on Saturday that fell to a resurgent opposition alliance has piled pressure on Malaysia's prime minister-to-be, Najib Razak.

U.S. and international human rights groups Wednesday praised President Barack Obama's directive to immediately suspend the work of military commissions established by his predecessor, George W. Bush, to prosecute suspected terrorists at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and pressed for its earliest possible closure.

The new U.S. administration headed by Democratic President Barack Obama is creating hope in Cuba for an easing of tensions in relations between the two countries, although there is scepticism in this regard in some academic circles.

Severe drought, which is many parts of Argentina is considered the worst in 100 years, has hit the country’s most agriculturally productive region and is expected to cause a sharp decline in grain and meat output.

'I have never seen anything like this in my whole life,' said Joseph Smith, 79, with tears of joy rolling down his dark, wrinkled cheeks as he watched Barack Obama being sworn in as the new U.S. president Tuesday. 'This is unbelievable.'

With chilling calm, the killer dismounted from the motorbike, pulled out his gun and shot Ores Sambrano through the head as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The journalist was on his way to a video store on a busy avenue in Valencia, an industrial town 100 kilometres west of the Venezuelan capital.

A World Social Forum (WSF) revitalised by a global crisis that has awakened new interest in the proposition that 'another world is possible' - now perceived as either less utopian or more urgently needed - will take place from Jan. 27 to Feb. 1 in Belém, in northern Brazil.

Despite the new free trade agreement linking southern African states, it still costs as much to move goods between African states as it costs to move goods from Asia to Africa, according to an economist.

'Operation Mistrust' could be the name of the efforts surrounding the planned unilateral release of six hostages by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which has run aground a month after it was announced.