The Barack Obama administration's new interest in the 2004 religious verdict, or 'fatwa', by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei banning the possession of nuclear weapons, long dismissed by national security officials, has prompted the New York Times to review the significance of the fatwa for the first time in several years.

Over the past few years, the political landscape of the Middle East was wholly transformed by the diffusion of social media across the region. Accounting for 50-65 percent of the region's population, young Muslims quickly embraced these new platforms of mass communication and soon thereafter, they became leaders of revolutions.

Afghanistan is quickly becoming one of the deadliest countries in the world for foreign and local journalists. In the last decade alone, 16 journalists have been killed on the job and so far no one has been brought to justice for these murders.

On Apr. 6, Tuareg rebels in the West African city of Timbuktu unilaterally declared their independence from Mali and announced the birth of a new nation called Azawad. The declaration was widely ignored or condemned by neighbouring African states and the international community.

The mandate will be very clear. Caribbean Community (CARICOM) delegates are going to Brazil in June for the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development determined to show that it will not be business as usual.

Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin.

Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin.

One of the big challenges facing the Argentine government in its plans to regain state control of the country's biggest oil firm, YPF, is to make up for the time lost under private management, when production and exploration fell.

The capital of Uruguay has become the headquarters of Latin America’s six leading Internet organisations, brought together in the same building.

Its accolades include being labelled the breadbasket of the Caribbean as well as the Amazon adventure. But the natural environment for which the South American country of Guyana is famous is also reeling from the effects of climate change.