Former U.S. President George W. Bush may have mostly vanished from the headlines since January 2009, but the alleged crimes committed by his administration are not forgotten.

Only four days ago, the administration of President Barack Obama appeared to be siding with the hundreds of thousands of Egyptian demonstrators calling for a quick end to Hosni Mubarak's 30-year reign, even if it didn't call explicitly for the Egyptian president to resign.

Social mobilisation against gold-mining is growing in Colombia, which is now one of the world's biggest per capita polluters of mercury, used in artisanal mining, according to the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO).

Political leaders have committed to ramping up restoration of the world's forests and tackling poverty in forest communities as part of pledges made at the ninth session Forum on Forests, which wrapped up at the United Nations headquarters in New York last week.

The people of three towns that would be flooded by the El Zapotillo dam to be built in the western Mexican state of Jalisco have refused to be relocated and are fighting to save their homes.

Zimbabwean activists will raise the issue of privatisation at the World Social Forum, taking place Feb 6-11 in Dakar, Senegal, and seek solidarity from other activists to resist a renewed government attempt at selling Zimbabwe’s state- owned enterprises.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is using brute force and intimidation tactics - similar to those deployed in Cairo - to suppress pro-Egyptian and Tunisian protests in the West Bank.

Tens of thousands of protesters continue to occupy Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand the ouster of longstanding President Hosni Mubarak. The regime is waging a war of attrition aimed at exhausting demonstrators - and the population at large. But the protest is holding firm.

In the quiet desert community of Nomirage, located just 20 kilometres east of San Diego, the sounds of impending war creep over the silent landscape.

The United Nations is intensifying its global campaign to eliminate one of the most widely-condemned religious and cultural rituals in the world today, mostly in Africa and Asia: female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C).