The new government of Trinidad and Tobago wasted little time. In fact, Finance Minister Winston Dookeran took less than 30 seconds of a two-hour budget presentation to announce that the People's Partnership government, headed by the country's first female prime minister, Kamla Persad Bissessar, was scrapping the $66.6 million dollar smelter plant project involving investors from China and Brazil.

A North Carolina man is joining a growing group of Sikhs who are looking to U.S. courts to remedy the 'ignorance and intolerance' faced by practitioners of the religion, especially since the attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, which they say 'unleashed a torrent of discrimination'.

Many African countries struggle with debt and finding money for national budgets because they fail to recognise taxation as a sustainable source of funding. Moreover, multinational companies are too easily given tax breaks while siphoning off money through illegal tax evasion.

Penguins are indisputably cute. And a children's book about such inoffensive animals could hardly be expected to trigger a nationwide controversy. But then came 'And Tango Makes Three' and a heated debate was fired up.

People walking casually past a sleeping or unconscious person has become a recurrent scene in downtown Athens these days. At Omonia square in the heart of the Greek capital one sees signs of social degeneration and segregation that were unknown only a decade ago.

Serbia has lost all its military and legal battles over Kosovo, but there is hope that the internationally sponsored talks between Belgrade and Pristina in October may bring some normalisation in relations between Serbia and its breakaway province.

Filipinos are used to having their country soaked by rain six months of the year, but these days worry is on many faces whenever raindrops start falling.

Questions hover over the future of Cambodia’s political opposition, as well as room for dissent, in the wake of the conviction and sentencing of the exiled leader of the country’s largest opposition party to 10 years in prison.

The death of guerrilla commander Luis Suárez, aka Jorge Briceño or 'Mono Jojoy', is a 'devastating blow' for Colombia's FARC insurgents, military affairs analyst Ariel Ávila told IPS.

An anthropologist and human rights defender who has worked for years with the indigenous people in one of Mexico's poorest and most marginalised regions has been awarded one of the world's most important human rights prizes.