With the powerful Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) relinquishing control of its fighting arm, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the Indian government, faced with its own Maoist insurgency, can breathe more easily.

As Egypt’s popular uprising gained momentum and Hosni Mubarak’s downfall looked increasingly inevitable, he used his final days in office to secure his vast wealth, say analysts.

Amid unprecedented political ferment in the Arab world, the United States used its veto Friday to block a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel's continuing annexation of Palestinian territory and calling for a freeze on settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

As popular protests escalated in some restive Arab countries Friday, U.S. President Barack Obama criticised the regime- sanctioned blood- letting of innocent demonstrators mobilising against government corruption and repression.

The United States appears to be strengthening its anti-drug strategy in Central America, whose focus in the case of Honduras will include military operations with troops from both countries, to begin in the jungle region of Mosquitia on the Atlantic coast.

The movement for change sweeping across the Middle East has now rocked Libya. Thousands of people have taken to the streets across many cities to demand an end to the 41-year autocratic rule of maverick leader Muammar Al- Gaddafi.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are seeking to eliminate the federal family planning programme and cut funding from Planned Parenthood, one of the country's leading providers of reproductive health care to low-income women.

One of the potential impacts of climate change that arouses most concern is an increase in diseases transmitted by tropical insects, like Chagas' disease, Argentina's main endemic illness.

The commander of U.S.-NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, Maj. Gen. James Terry, asserted last month that the homes systematically destroyed by U.S. forces across three districts of Kandahar province as part of Operation Dragon Strike in October and November 'were abandoned, empty and wired with ingenious arrays of bombs'.

Bad governance and the persistence of the tax avoidance industry allow billions of dollars of profit to be siphoned out of Africa, untaxed, every year.