Brazil and France have 'similar interests in the area of global geopolitics' and Brazil shares 'affinities in terms of circumstances and values' with India and South Africa, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said Friday, explaining his country's growing 'extra-regional' alliances.

As nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West continue to move slowly, U.S. President Barack Obama is coming under growing pressure from what appears to be a concerted lobbying and media campaign urging him to act more aggressively to stop Iran's nuclear programme.

Seizures of illegal drugs in transit through Venezuela are on the rise, and the country maintains 'working cooperation' with the United States in the fight against trafficking. But for all its pains, it has been decertified by the U.S., which refuses to sell it equipment for military and police forces, complains Néstor Reverol, the head of the National Anti-Drug Office (ONA).

The United Nations is surprised at the continued rise in global military spending - particularly at a time when the international community is grappling with a spreading financial crisis which threatens to undermine the poverty reduction goals of the world body.

This week, two respected human rights organisations - one Palestinian, one Israeli - each came out with very full reports into the extent of the damage caused by the assault Israel waged against Gaza last winter.

Each month since U.S. President Barack Obama has taken office, Afghanistan has seen a growing number of civilian and military deaths - a spiral of violence which has served to destabilise a nation already struggling to recover from its previous three decades of war.

The global economic crisis has hit the African continent especially hard despite not being involved in its making, civil society organisations gathered in the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo heard at the fifth people’s summit of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

An alarming rise has been recorded in the number of Nigerian girls trafficked to Italy.

They may be in their twilight years but Asia’s senior citizens are not ready to be left behind -- and forgotten -- by the wide, wired world.

After an aviation accident claimed yet another of India’s top leaders recently, experts are calling for stricter controls on the use of helicopters and small aircraft by politicians in a hurry to reach their destinations.