A few days after she created history by becoming the first woman to be elected as opposition leader and the leader of a major political party in Trinidad and Tobago, Kamla Persad Bissessar was kicking mad at the 'misunderstanding' of the role of women and their contribution to society.

Activists in Mexico complain that the deforestation threatening the environmental health of Mexico has been accentuated by the granting of public areas to private companies.

'Seven Burmese military soldiers attacked me and three of my friends,' said Chang Chang, from the northern Kachin State of Burma.

For the first time since September 2006, Mahmoud Abu Rahma, a leading figure in the Palestinian human rights group Al Mezan, has been granted permission to travel outside Gaza.

Irina Bokova, who was elected director-general of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) last September, heads the Paris-based agency at a time when the world body has placed a high priority on gender empowerment.

Civil libertarians hit back hard Sunday at reports indicating that the Barack Obama administration is about to cave in to pressure from Congress and local groups in New York City and is not only considering transferring the cases of suspected terrorists to another federal court, but even moving them to the military commission system.

Thailand’s labour ministry is on the hunt for half a million migrant workers from neighbouring Burma who have gone underground rather than join a new foreign workers’ programme, one that some critics have described as a 'confusing' initiative.

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a 'city of 80,000 people' as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand.

A plan to give the European Union's lending arm a beefed-up mandate for financing the fight against climate change has drawn a sceptical response from campaigners on green and economic justice issues.

Was it Yasser Arafat's biggest political error? A decade ago, the deadline for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel as envisaged in the 1993 Oslo peace accords thrust itself into the fruitless Palestinian-Israeli negotiations.