A recent meeting between Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Kurdish President Massoud Barzani appears to be a crucial step in lowering tensions in the country, but it has also prompted questions as to whether the two leaders can put an end to their differences.

Arnoldo Ramón Virgilio’s legs are of little use to him, but he has a way with words that more than makes up for any physical limitations. He’s one of the outpatients at the 'América Labadí Arce' Medical and Education Centre, which provides health care and rehabilitation for the disabled in this city in eastern Cuba.

The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed concern this week over the treatment received by indigenous communities in Peru.

The second World Outgames, held in the Danish capital, offered up a veritable smorgasbord of sport, politics and arts while celebrating sexual and gender diversity. But it also reminded participants that bigotry against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, sometimes culminating in violence, remains a scourge across the world.

In Tamilnadu, southern India, and Uttar Pradesh, northern India, villagers have revived ancient systems of storing surface and groundwater that are putting them in a good position to contend with today’s changing climate.

Kashmir’s carpet industry has been hit very hard by the global economic slowdown, 47-year-old Bashir Ahmad Bhat explained while working on his loom in a run-down hut in downtown Srinagar.

For years, fishing communities along Africa’s 30,000 km-long coastline have been raising the alarm on the depletion of their fish stocks, to no avail. Over-fishing by foreign vessels has been wiping out the livelihood of West African fishers, contributing to desperate migration attempts into Europe.

The Dakar rally, held this year for the first time in Chile and Argentina, caused severe damage to archaeological sites in northern Chile, according to a report by the Council on National Monuments.

Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), is fighting for its very survival as the movement faces implosion, and attacks from all sides.

In China, a reduction in the number of executions carried out in recent years was accompanied by a promising statement by the vice president of the Supreme Court that the country would gradually slow the implementation of capital punishment to the point that there is "a very limited number of executions", writes Elisabetta Zamparutti, a deputy in the Italian parliament, a leader of the Radical Party, and editor of the annual report on the Death Penalty in the World for Hands Off Cain.