In the latest in a string of setbacks that could cost the U.S. oil giant Chevron billions of dollars in damages, President Barack Obama decided this week to extend trade preferences for Ecuadorean exports for another six months under the 1991 Andean Trade Preferences Act (ATPA).

After months of planning and putting pieces in order, aspects of the new U.S. strategy in Afghanistan are beginning to be concretely implemented – including a surge of troops and attempts to curtail the poppy trade that allegedly funds insurgents.

Local and international human rights organisations and left-wing legislators condemned the suspension of constitutional rights in Honduras during the night-time curfew, which tightened the state of siege in effect since President Manuel Zelaya was ousted Sunday.

United Nations-backed Congolese armed forces conducting intensified military operations in eastern and northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have failed to protect civilians from brutal rebel retaliatory attacks and instead are themselves attacking and raping Congolese civilians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.

Genetically modified (GM) crops that can withstand environmental stress may be one answer to climate change but a powerful lobby is building up against the patenting of technologies involved, especially when they are derivatives of traditional farmers’ innovations.

The Barack Obama administration has given new prominence to a Bush administration charge that Iran is providing military training and assistance to the Taliban in Afghanistan, for which no evidence has ever been produced, and which has been discredited by data obtained by IPS from the Pentagon itself.

'It never crossed my mind that I would have to leave my country and leave behind our farms, work, people and lifestyle. It was a life or death decision we had to take in a matter of hours,' said Amalia*, a 42-year-old married Colombian woman with two children, who for the past seven years has lived on the outskirts of the Venezuelan capital.

Mexico’s Pacific coast, one of the world's richest seaboards in terms of biodiversity, has been the focus of very few scientific studies. A new observatory aims to fill that void.

Russian federal and Chechen authorities should immediately put a stop to home burnings and other collective punishment practices against families of alleged insurgents in Chechnya, said a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Thursday.

Red tunas, sharks, rays and cods may soon disappear from our tables. Negotiations are ongoing at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to reduce the subsidies that contribute to this catastrophe. These talks foresee exceptions for developing countries, but small fishers may have to turn to other sources of livelihood.