The caution with which Raul Castro introduced changes in the country's economic and financial structure during his three years as president seems to have ended: circumstances now require Cuba's leaders to approach the economy with greater realism and reshape certain structures inherited from the old Soviet-style socialist model, writes Leonardo Padura Fuentes, a Cuban writer and journalist whose novels have been translated into a dozen languages.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//

The war of words between Israel and the Lebanese resistance movement Hizbullah has heated up in the last week, raising fears that another war between Lebanon and Israel is imminent.

The Trinidad and Tobago government is finding itself against the wall amid allegations that it is attempting to curb press freedoms in this oil rich twin island republic.

With Sonia Sotomayor’s swearing in over the weekend as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts are aggressively debating what was learned from her four days of gruelling testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee - and whether these hearings are instructive or merely Capital Hill’s version of Kabuki Theatre.

At the two-day summit between the heads of state of Canada, Mexico and the United States, Mexican President Felipe Calderón failed to obtain a positive response with respect to the situation of millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants in the United States, a solution to the dispute over access to U.S. highways by Mexican trucks, or the removal of the visa requirement for Mexicans, put in place by Canada last month.

Nigeria’s president Umaru Yar’Adua is embarking on an ambitious move to end armed insurgency in the country’s oil-rich Niger Delta region.

The United States Supreme Court will hear the U.S. government’s appeal on a lower court ruling requiring the release of photos showing the abuse of prisoners held in overseas facilities.

When human rights groups accused the United States of violating the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners-of-war (PoWs) in Iraq and Afghanistan, the administration of former President George W. Bush either displayed arrogance or feigned ignorance of the implications of abusing humanitarian laws.

A survey commissioned by Al Jazeera in Pakistan has revealed a widespread disenchantment with the United States for interfering with what most people consider internal Pakistani affairs.