A U.S. agreement to exchange nuclear information and materials with an Arab country in the Persian Gulf is facing opposition because of a video of torture conducted by a member of a ruling family from one of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Thuraya Judi Alwazir is one of few women judges sitting on the Palestinian Authority's Judicial Authority. Alwazir speaks here to IPS about her experiences in a largely male-dominated environment, on the rights of women in regard to honour killings and domestic violence, and on the death penalty as applied in the West Bank.

The lives of hundreds of critically ill Gazans continue to be jeopardised by the power struggle between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah, and political blackmail by Israel.

The European Union's Eastern Partnership, promoting closer cooperation between the EU and former Soviet Republics, has been enthusiastically endorsed in Eastern Europe, ignored in the West, and criticised in Russia.

South America is the only region that has not submitted a report of its actions in the last year to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity, although it accounts for 40 percent of the world’s plant and animal species and the deadline was Mar. 30.

Nearly 140 new businesses and interest groups have joined in the intense lobbying in Washington on climate change, according to the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI).

Bad food is not the only reason thousands of mostly pre-trial detainees have been going on an intermittent two-week hunger strike in Arizona’s Maricopa County jails.

The administration of President Barack Obama is considering the creation of a national security court to try cases in which there is enough reliable intelligence to hold a foreign terrorism suspect in preventive detention, but not enough to bring a case in federal court or even through military commissions.

In Mexico scientists are seeking volunteers who are obese, diabetic or suffering from cancer or other diseases, in order to study their genes. The results will help fill in a genetic map of the Mexican population.

Leaders of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples who are attending an international meeting here this week say they want governments to stop oil and gas corporations from further extraction on their lands.