The reform of Niger's constitution to allow president Mamadou Tandja to remain in power beyond his original mandate and even become president for life, was motivated by the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into the West African country as a consequence of opaque foreign, especially French, investments in the local uranium mines.

It could almost be the French Riviera: women basking in the sun on wooden deckchairs; toddlers rolling in the sand or building castles; young people in colourful kayaks and sailboats on the water; elderly men playing a game of pétanque on the beach.

German writers and philosophers have begun to condemn military intervention in Afghanistan as an 'invasion', a 'mistake', and a 'delusion'.

U.S. President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former Irish President Mary Robinson Wednesday, despite a vigorous campaign from hardline supporters of Israel urging him to rescind the award.

Facing a worsening security situation in Afghanistan, as well as rapidly approaching elections in that country, the Obama Administration is touting a new, broad approach to winning the fight against insurgent groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A delegation of representatives of the de facto government headed by Roberto Micheletti in Honduras began to meet Thursday with State Department officials in Washington, while demonstrators demanding the return of ousted President Manuel Zelaya have been beaten and arrested here.

In 1975, Brazilian nutritionist and paediatrician Clara Brandão introduced 'multimixture' in the diet of 13 preschools in Santarém, in the northern state of Pará, and noted how the malnourished children gained weight and completed their schooling. Some even went on to university.

The head of Colombia's biggest association of indigenous people is concerned that allowing U.S. troops to use military bases in his country will signal a regression to former times when the United States exercised control over Latin America, while a native activist warned of an increase in the number of cases of sexual abuse of young indigenous women by foreign soldiers.

Since 2001 China has become an increasingly active member of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and proponent of open and competitive markets, but yesterday the WTO released a report saying that China has violated WTO protocols by restricting imports of DVDs, software and books and limiting the ability of foreign suppliers to distribute their own products in China.

Basir 'Steve' Ahmed was returning from a bomb-clearing mission in Khogyani district in northeastern Afghanistan when a suicide bomber blew up an explosive-filled vehicle nearby. The blast flipped the military armoured truck Ahmed was riding in three or four times, and filled it with smoke. The Afghan translator had been accompanying the 927th Engineer Company near the Pakistan border on that October day in 2008 that would forever change his life.