News stories by Marina Litvinsky, page 2

The government of Equatorial Guinea has looted billions of dollars in oil revenue instead of improving the lives of its citizens, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released Thursday.

Human rights groups have expressed concern over the deadly clashes involving Uighur protestors in the western China's Xinjiang region Sunday, which left 156 dead and over 800 injured.

United Nations-backed Congolese armed forces conducting intensified military operations in eastern and northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have failed to protect civilians from brutal rebel retaliatory attacks and instead are themselves attacking and raping Congolese civilians, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday.

Russian federal and Chechen authorities should immediately put a stop to home burnings and other collective punishment practices against families of alleged insurgents in Chechnya, said a report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Thursday.

Six months into his new job as president of the United States, Barack Obama inspires more public confidence than any other political leader, said a new WorldPublicOpinion.org (WPO) poll released here Monday.

The U.S. State Department Thursday confirmed that Washington is providing arms and ammunition to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) of Somalia in a bid to thwart its defeat by a loose coalition of radical Islamist militias which, according to some analysts, are linked to al Qaeda.

The United States Tuesday urged the government of Sudan and former rebels in the south to re-invigorate their 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), as 30 Sudanese political leaders met with 170 observers from 32 countries and international organisations here to discuss the faltering CPA, which expires in 2011.

Environmental groups expressed little hope the participants at the 61st annual International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting, beginning Monday in Madeira, Portugal, would reach a compromise that would reduce the number of whales killed each year.

Many of the firearms fuelling Mexican drug violence originated in the United States, says a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released Thursday.

At least 11 Sri Lankan journalists were driven into exile in the past 12 months amid an intensive government crackdown on critical reporters and editors, said a new survey from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released Wednesday.