Kyrgyzstan's glaciers are receding at what scientists say is an alarming rate, fuelled by global warming. And while experts warn of a subsequent catastrophe for energy and water security for Kyrgyzstan and neighbour states downstream reliant on its water flows, devastation to local ecosystems and the effects on plant and wildlife could be just as severe.

The poppy argument between Chinese and UK politicians this week may not have escalated into a serious problem to derail British Prime Minister David Cameron's first official visit to Beijing but it was symbolic of how 150 years after the Opium wars the two powers are still talking across each other.

An emergency vaccination campaign against polio begins Nov. 12 in the Republic of Congo, where an epidemic centred on the southern city of Pointe-Noire has killed at least 100 people since the beginning of October.

The administration of President Barack Obama should begin shifting to a counterterrorism (CT) strategy requiring many fewer troops in Afghanistan if its pending review finds that the current counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy is not working, according to a new report by a bipartisan task force of 25 prominent analysts and former top foreign policy officials.

Valuing and sharing common people's knowledge and experience, awakening critical consciousness and finding paths for effective social participation are the processes used by more than 1,000 people in Cuba working in Popular Education, a liberating approach to education developed by Brazilian educator Paulo Freire in the 1960s.

It had seemed her kids had the flu or a cold. But when it got worse, she took little Abigail to hospital. It was already too late; Abigail died in her mother's arms.

Created with the aim of recovering the remains of the victims of forced disappearance from Argentina's 1976-1983 dictatorship, the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team has already worked in 40 countries and is expanding the scope of cases that it investigates.

One year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced plans for a wide-reaching overhaul of the country's long-mismanaged immigration detention system, human rights and immigration advocacy organisations are charging that the government has yet to make significant progress toward the underlying goal of detention reform — a true shift from a penal to a civil approach to immigration detention.

When U.S. President Barack Obama capped a flurry of activity on nuclear non-proliferation this spring by welcoming the largest gathering of world leaders ever in Washington for a Nuclear Security Summit, many experts hoped to see cascading effects that would lead to even further elimination of nuclear weapons.

The BP oil spill earlier this year in the Gulf of Mexico seems to have motivated Argentina to double the protected area in the Patagonian Sea, which is rich in petroleum -- and in biodiversity.