How many varieties of date palm or melon exist? And why should we care? IPS spoke to three 'Guardians of Diversity' so named by Bioversity International for their contribution to conservation.

A town in Argentina has launched a programme that requires restaurants and other food producers to hand over their used vegetable oils to be distilled into biodiesel, which will be used to run the city's vehicles and public transportation.

At least 11 Sri Lankan journalists were driven into exile in the past 12 months amid an intensive government crackdown on critical reporters and editors, said a new survey from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has laid out his terms for peace in the Middle East. In a highly anticipated speech at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University last Sunday, Netanyahu said – for the first time – that he was willing to consider a 'demilitarised' Palestinian state, existing side by side with Israel.

Ever since being elected as President in 2008, conservative Lee-Myung-bak has pursued a hard-line policy towards North Korea, with the country’s left also blaming him for recent tensions in the peninsula.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s participation in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit at Yekaterinburg Tuesday appears to have been motivated chiefly by the security environment in the region shaping up around Washington’s ‘AfPak’ policy.

Fiercer heat waves and wildfires in the U.S. western states, bigger storm surges along the country’s coasts, and disruptions to energy, water and transportation systems are just some of the expected impacts of climate change, according to a new White House report that marks the first scientific statement from the Barack Obama administration acknowledging that the problem is already directly impacting U.S. citizens.

At his confirmation hearings two weeks ago, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said reducing civilian deaths from air strikes in Afghanistan was 'strategically decisive' and declared his 'willingness to operate in ways that minimise casualties or damage, even when it makes our task more difficult.'

As the leaders of the pro-Hindu, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) blame each other for the massive debacle that the party suffered in the April/May elections it is clear that its fundamentalist agenda has few takers in a rapidly modernising India.

Thanks to the growing number of films by and about indigenous peoples, over 90 movies, mainly from Latin America, will be screened and voted on by spectators at the First Chilean Indigenous Peoples' Film Festival in the Pacific port city of Valparaíso.