Between April and August this year, 4.9 million barrels of oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. How much remains today is not yet clear and is a hot topic of debate among academic and government scientists.

'Find, fix, finish, and follow-up' - also known as F4 - is the way the Pentagon describes the mission of secret military teams in Afghanistan which have been given a mandate to pursue alleged members of the Taliban or al Qaeda wherever they may be found. Some call these 'manhunting' operations and the units assigned to them 'capture/kill' teams.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen is threatening an international showdown with neighbouring Thailand over the vexed question of managing a 10th- century Hindu temple, an architectural jewel of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilisation.

The U.S. state of Mississippi recently reopened all of its fishing areas. The problem is that commercial shrimpers refuse to trawl because they fear the toxicity of the waters and marine life due to the BP oil disaster.

'The threats change your whole life,' said Jade Ramírez, a journalist who has been living for months with that burden, which also hangs over a growing group of her colleagues in Mexico.

The past, centred around the democratic records of his popular politician parents, may have sent Benigno Aquino III to the Philippine presidency, but it is now also biting at his heels, less than two months after he assumed office.

Inundated by appeals through text messages, email and Twitter, as well as in print and broadcast media, that call for donations of dried rations, hygiene kits, buckets, tubs and cooking pots, and straw mats, Ambreen Siddiqui feels lost in trying to help her fellow Pakistanis in the midst of the country’s worst floods in decades.

Almost 25 years after the world’s worst nuclear accident a series of new scientific studies have suggested the effects of the Chernobyl disaster have been underestimated.

Just off Omar Al-Mukhtar Street, Gaza City's main thoroughfare, in a narrow, sandy alley way is a little second-hand clothing shop. In the dimly lit store, with only intermittent electricity for some hours a day at best, sits a single battered and aging sewing machine.

Howls of protest from doctors and officials in India have followed the naming of the New Delhi Metallo-1 (NDM-1), a gene that can transform infectious bacteria into superbugs that are resistant to the most powerful antibiotics. But other experts hope that the furore on this issue may lead to a rethink on the widespread practice of using medicines indiscriminately.