Indigenous peoples risk losing control over their traditional knowledge if the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) insists on strict standards for managing access to information.

When the administration of President Barack Obama formally abandoned the longstanding U.S. 'war on terror' - perceived by some as a codeword for 'war against Islam' - there were hopes of a new relationship between the United States and the Muslim world after eight long years of political friction.

The Zimbabwean coalition government cannot afford to repay debts incurred when President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF was ruling on its own and will not repay those debts.

Brazil has long been committed to developing alternatives to fossil fuels to power its vehicle fleet, to the extent that 90 percent of new cars sold in the country are flex-fuel, running on ethanol or gasoline in any proportion. Now the government is embarking on another technological field: electric vehicles.

Many civil society organisations are staying on in Sardinia island in support of a region severely affected by the economic crisis, after the G8 leaders summit was moved from there to the city of L'Aquila.

The suspicions of several Caribbean leaders about Venezuela’s growing political and economic clout in the region boiled over last week as they met for their four-day annual summit in Guyana.

Getting around isn’t easy for Jose Noronha. With minimal use of his legs, he has opted for a red wheelchair-bicycle hybrid that he pedals with his hands, a common sight in Dili, East Timor’s capital.

For decades, rubber plantations in the country's Mekong region have reaped huge profits for local businessmen. However, this industry, long regarded a blessing, is now increasingly becoming a source of social strife.

When China’s population control was imposed in 1980, it was meant to be a temporary measure which the government promised to phase out in three decades. It was intended to halt the baby boom of the 1950s and 1960s.

A recent study by the Global Humanitarian Forum, headed by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, postulates that the economic and human costs of climate change could now amount to some 125 billion dollars per year and the loss of 300,000 lives, writes Maurice Strong, who was the Secretary General of the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, first Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and Secretary General of the 1992 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment.