News stories by Aprille Muscara, page 2

The international community is ramping up efforts to alleviate the growing humanitarian crisis in Libya, with has affected over 200,000 people since the Muammar Gaddafi regime first began a violent crackdown on opposition forces some three weeks ago.

As violent unrest continues unabated in Libya, with the potential to descend into what U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called a 'protracted civil war' in statements to lawmakers here this week, international rights groups are raising the alarm over the resulting humanitarian crisis and the particularly desperate plight of stranded immigrant labourers.

International efforts to strangle Muammar Gaddafi's regime are intensifying, as Western leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, call for the autocrat's immediate departure, while the Pentagon and key allies consider contingency plans for a potential no-fly zone over the North African nation.

As the bloodshed of protestors in Libya continues unabated for the eighth day in a row, the White House took its strongest stance against Muammar Gaddafi's regime Friday, announcing that the United States will impose unilateral sanctions and has suspended its embassy operations in the oil-producing country.

In less than two decades, all of the world's coral reefs will be threatened if global climate change and local pressures like overfishing and pollution remain unaddressed, disproportionately impacting the livelihoods of some of the world's most impoverished people, a report warned Wednesday.

With a 2015 deadline fast approaching to meet a collective global promise to tackle poverty and improve education, health and environmental sustainability around the world, development and humanitarian advocates are up in arms over conservative lawmakers' proposals to slash and burn entire chunks of the United States' foreign aid budget.

With U.S. President Barack Obama's release of his Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 foreign affairs budget Monday and a proposal currently in the U.S. House of Representatives for massive cuts in FY 2011 international spending, the fight to sustain U.S. aid abroad is intensifying.

After 30 years in power, a handful of assassination attempts, the historical backing of five United States presidencies, 68 billion dollars in U.S. aid and 18 consecutive days of massive, pro-democracy demonstrations, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak finally ceded power Friday, leaving observers in Washington wondering what happens next.

In the midst of a belt-tightening political climate in which pledges by prominent lawmakers to slash the United States' foreign affairs budget will likely soon be realised, some rights groups and experts are concerned about the increasingly blurry distinction between security and development in the face of shrinking resources.

Amid renewed pockets of unrest throughout Sudan and continuing violence in Darfur, government officials in Khartoum announced Monday that a whopping 98.83 percent of southern voters — numbering more than 3.8 million in a country of over 42.3 million — cast their ballots in favour of secession during last month's highly anticipated referendum.