Somalia is currently under what James Fearon and David Laitin of Stanford University call 'a neo-trusteeship system'. Various external powers, while disagreeing among themselves, make the important decisions for the Somali people.

Heavy fighting is continuing in Abidjan where forces loyal to Côte d'Ivoire's presidential rivals are battling for control of the country's main city.

U.S. human rights groups reacted angrily to the Justice Department's announcement Monday that the self-acclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon will be tried before a military commission at the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba.

Rather belatedly, Latin America is beginning to test products imported from Japan to check that they are not contaminated with radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear power station that was severely damaged by the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Nearly 60 international civil society organisations urged the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Monday to earmark some 2.8 billion dollars in profits from the agency's gold sales for cancelling the debts of the world's poorest nations.

The United Nations has remained virtually helpless as hundreds of its staffers, mostly peacekeepers, are killed, kidnapped or victimised by unbridled violence worldwide.

Israelis have breathed a national sigh of relief following the publication of an absolutely unexpected article in last Friday's Washington Post. The column's title and author said it all.

In a nuclear crisis that is becoming increasingly serious, Japan’s Nuclear Safety Agency confirmed that radioactive iodine-131 in seawater samples taken near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex that was seriously damaged by the recent tsunami off the coast of Japan is 4,385 times the level permitted by law.

With just seven months to go before a pivotal U.N. climate change summit in South Africa, green groups are raising the alarm here about the future of the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s only international treaty that mandates most industrialised nations to cut their environment polluting greenhouse gases (GHG) to save the planet from overheating.

Since psychiatric care was decentralised last year in South Africa, patients have been moved from hospitals into community day hospitals that don't have the appropriate resources to deal with mental illnesses. As a result, many of society's most vulnerable have slipped through the cracks in the system and now walk the streets like invisible people.