'When time starts to change, no one can stop it,' says a character in 'El canto del pozo ciego' (Blind Mouth Singing), a play that is reviving the cultural exchange between Cuba and the United States, which has been virtually nonexistent over the past 10 years.

When a U.N. human rights investigator for Burma called for an international inquiry to look into possible war crimes by the country’s military regime, he added significant weight to similar calls that had been made in other quarters.

Just a month after the buzz from the vuvuzelas ended at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Singapore is busy preparing to host the next major event in the world sports calendar — the Youth Olympic Games. But few seem to know, or care, about the inaugural youth version of the venerable Olympic Games.

While India's opposition parties are agitating against moves by the pro-reform government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to remove subsidies on petrol and other fuels, experts say the country has laboured too long under price distortions that have not benefited poorer people -- or the environment.

Outside the battered Civil Defence station in northern Gaza's Jabalia region, Mohammed Zidan, a seven-year veteran of fire-fighting and rescue services, stands on crutches in front of battered Civil Defence vehicles.

Six Yemeni fishing boats captured in Egyptian territorial waters in June might have gone unnoticed if not for their unusual cargo -- several kilometers of long lines and over 20 tons of dead sharks.

As a mining giant prepares to open a major uranium mining site in Western Australia next year, the clamour for the state to once more ban mining of the radioactive mineral has become louder.

Peru is the only Latin American country that has made steps towards joining the international Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), but has a difficult stretch ahead as it tries to overcome industry resistance to reporting profits and the government's own obstacles.

Another round of negotiations towards a global treaty on climate change concluded in Bonn on Aug. 6, with activists calling on parties to rediscover a spirit of compromise and make offers rather than demands.

It was an idea that became an institution, and that became the moving spirit behind the creation of the State of Israel. These were people who wanted to change the world. Now, they're content to live a life of carefree irrelevance. That's the Kibbutz today.