News

31.12.2007 UNITED NATIONS, Dec 31 (OneWorld) - Benazir Bhutto's supporters are wondering if the UN Security Council is helping cover up a conspiracy behind her killing.

27.12.2007 BAQUBA, Dec 27 (IPS) - The Iraqi government announcement that monthly food rations will be cut by half has left many Iraqis asking how they can survive.

27.12.2007 Intense diplomatic efforts are continuing in Afghanistan to prevent the expulsion of a senior UN official accused of engaging in talks with leaders of the Taliban.

21.12.2007 Last Friday, Margaret Wanjiru -- a parliamentary candidate in Kenya's Dec. 27 general elections -- was reportedly attacked while campaigning in her Starehe constituency in the capital, Nairobi. While she escaped injury, her supporters are said to have been hurt and her campaign van extensively damaged by stoning…Still, those targeted in this incident were probably luckier than Martha Kibwana.

20.12.2007 Congress' approval Wednesday of $70 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mean the twin conflicts are now more costly to American taxpayers than the war in Vietnam.

19.12.2007 As UN member states voted overwhelmingly for a moratorium on the death penalty, an influential rights watchdog has challenged Nigeria's claim that no one has been executed in its prisons for several years.

18.12.2007 Eight years ago the world's wealthiest countries promised to provide the funding needed to ensure that all children worldwide can attend school. But now, halfway to the global 2015 deadline for universal primary education, developed countries are failing to come up with the aid.

17.12.2007 Renewed fighting between army troops and rebel forces in the eastern province of North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, is worsening displacement among civilians in the area and leading to forced recruitment of displaced people, including children, as fighters.

17.12.2007 Palestine will require "significant aid" over the next couple of years in order to avert a dangerous plunge in poverty levels, says a new report issued by an international development bank.

15.12.2007 While delegates to the Bali climate conference tried to hammer out an agreement to preserve the planet for future generations, in New York delegates to a UN General Assembly Special Session wrestled with another pressing problem: how to meet the promise of "A World Fit for Children" made by world governments in 2002.

14.12.2007 This week, the World Bank introduced a new multi-million dollar fund to remunerate developing countries for the value of their living forests at the UN climate conference in Bali.

13.12.2007 In the face of globalisation, the U.S. labour movement is striving to reinvent -- and reinvigorate -- itself by establishing closer ties with the world's network of international unions.

12.12.2007 The parents of an Army reservist who committed suicide after returning from Iraq testified before Congress Wednesday, urging that more mental health services be available for returned veterans.

11.12.2007 Global initiatives to reduce carbon emissions are bound to fail if the interests of indigenous communities are not taken into account, leaders of the world's 370 million indigenous peoples are warning.

10.12.2007 The United Nations today launched a worldwide campaign to stop human rights abuses and violations by governments, private businesses and others.

07.12.2007 Prominent human rights groups are urging the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Burma in response to its military government's continuing recruitment of child soldiers.

05.12.2007 Rising carbon emissions from developing countries would threaten the world with severe climate change within a single generation, even if rich countries were to stop their own greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, according to new study by an independent think tank.

05.12.2007 The newest official U.S. intelligence review not only contradicts the Bush administration's line on Iranian intentions regarding nuclear weapons, but points to a link between Tehran's 2003 decision to halt research on weaponisation and its decision to negotiate with European foreign ministers on both nuclear and Iranian security concerns.

05.12.2007 When Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told participants at a climate change meeting in Bali this week that the countries of the world "are on a first date here," he didn't realise that his joke would come back to haunt him.

03.12.2007 Calls for substantial change in White House policies toward HIV are on the rise as Congress gets ready to consider the Bush administration's new financial proposal to fight the epidemic at home and abroad.