Zimbabwe’s unity government is stuttering in its attempt at restoring press freedom in a country which had once branded independent journalists as ‘enemies of the state’.

A leading human rights organisation is charging that an American Psychological Association (APA) task force formed to advise the U.S. military on prisoner interrogations was 'stacked with Defence Department and [George W.] Bush Administration officials' and 'rushed to conclusions that violated the Geneva Convention.'

The advances of the Taliban insurgents beyond the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in recent weeks and the failure of the Pakistani military to counter them have brought a rare moment of truth for top national security officials of the Barack Obama administration.

As climate change takes hold, even the mighty Himalayas and Hindu Kush mountain ranges are now losing their snow and ice.

Hundreds of thousands of people are being wrongly identified because of the government’s wasteful and inefficient management of the nation’s one million-strong terrorist watchlist, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Representatives of School of the Americas Watch visited El Salvador to ask the incoming government of the leftwing FMLN, which will take office in June, to stop sending military officers to the U.S. army academy, which has long been accused of teaching torture techniques.

The U.N. Security Council, which has remained virtually paralysed on Palestine because of strong Western support for Israel, is considered equally ineffective on Burma (Myanmar) because of Chinese and Russian backing for the military junta in that politically troubled Southeast Asian nation.

The exposure of the European Commission's (EC) manufacturing of African business support for the contentious economic partnership agreements (EPAs) has so far elicited little action by members of the European Parliament.

One young indigenous person commits suicide every 10 days on average in the centre-west Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Blamed on the lack of land and opportunities, the proportions of this tragedy have drawn the attention of local and foreign experts.

Beijing has confirmed that its more assertive stance in recent territorial spats with its neighbours is a prelude to a more forceful projection of China’s rising military and diplomatic clout in the region and beyond.