Events currently unfolding in Afghanistan’s northern province of Balkh may be a preview for the future.

A bill on the press and freedom of expression that has been kicking around in the Costa Rican Congress for the past eight years, which deals with questions like source confidentiality, access to public information, and libel and slander laws, was saved in late August from being permanently shelved by the legislature.

World leaders like France's Sarkozy, Germany's Angela Merkel, Brazil's Lula da Silva, and China's Hu Jintao are calling for the reform and downsizing of the global casino at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, September 24-25, writes Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, vice-chair of the global Climate Prosperity Alliance and co-organiser of the Beyond GDP Conference in the European Parliament in 2007.

'We produce electricity but we manage darkness. We have big energy sources of electricity but only 20 percent of the population has access to electricity because most of the energy is sold to foreign countries.'

As all factions of the U.S. Congress continue a bruising debate about how to change the U.S. health system, one state, Massachusetts, seems to point the way clear, but activists say the Massachusetts plan is already troubled and doomed by skyrocketing costs.

With an insurgency threatening to worsen, Thailand’s military is turning to civilians like Nipa Waya to return fire in the three southern provinces close to the Malaysian border.

Garbage collectors in Cairo's Giza district have resumed work, but it could take weeks to clear the 25,000 tons of garbage that accumulated during their month-long strike, and longer still to solve the underlying problems.

Iceland wants wetland restoration to be assessed for emission reduction units at the summit to work out a new deal on climate change in December in Copenhagen.

Are climate change and reproductive health two disparate subjects?

'I cried a lot, I couldn't believe I was in prison. The day I was put in jail, I never thought I would be there for a long time,' an indigenous market vendor, Jacinta Francisco, said Thursday in Mexico after she was released from prison, where she spent three years for a crime she did not commit.