LIBYA: No ‘Mission Accomplished’ Claimed in Washington Yet

While the apparent end of Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year reign over Libya was greeted with considerable satisfaction here Monday, no one was prepared to declare "mission accomplished", particularly given the looming questions around what happens next.

THAILAND: Yingluck Will Need Luck and Pluck

As she stepped into her role as an ingénue on the macho stage of Thai politics, the backers of Yingluck Shinawatra, the country’s first woman prime minister, had hoped she would enjoy a honeymoon period.

EUROPE: ‘Rethink Rhetoric Against Islam’

Conservative governments and centre-right parties in Europe were attacking multiculturalism and denigrating Muslim immigrants long before Norwegian right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik used similar arguments to justify mass killings in Oslo and Utoya Island.

ISRAEL: Rights Recede Under Opium of Occupation

The nationwide movement for social justice that sent tens of thousands of Israelis to the streets on the weekend was seemingly oblivious to the fact that, concurrently, the Palestinians were officially announcing their bid for U.N.- endorsed recognition of statehood.

CLIMATE CHANGE: Welcome to Bizarro World

Canada and the United States are now the centre of Bizarro World. This is where leaders promise to reduce carbon emissions but ensure a new, supersized oil pipeline called Keystone XL is built, guaranteeing further expansion of the Alberta tar sands that produce the world's most carbon-laden oil.

EGYPT: Mubarak Trial Another Win for Tahrir Protesters

Egyptians watched with rapt attention as deposed president Hosni Mubarak was hauled before court on live television to answer charges of corruption and murder. The move appears to have restored public confidence in Egypt's ruling military council, which has governed the country since Mubarak's February ouster.

TURKEY: Resignations Herald the Demilitarisation of Politics

The simultaneous resignations of Turkey's top military brass last week indicates that the civilian government may finally have more sway over politics than the top generals, according to analysts and activists.

Islamic Force Rises in Tunisia

The fundamentalist Ennahda party seems poised to take advantage of a chaotic situation ahead of general elections in Tunisia. Ennahda and other Islamist parties are taking advantage of the Aug. 2 deadline for registration for elections coinciding with the start of the holy month of Ramadan, when there is better attendance at mosques.

People Find Online Power Now in Malaysia

Following a major rally involving tens of thousands of protesters calling for electoral reforms in Malaysia, someone set up a Facebook page calling for Prime Minister Najib Razak to step down. Within ten days, the number of people who said they "like" the page crossed 200,000.

U.S.: Republican Lawmakers Tell the World Where to Go

On Wednesday, they voted to cut all U.S. contributions to the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS), a symbol of U.S. hemispheric dominance for more than 60 years.

Growing Water Deficit Threatening Grain Harvests

Many countries are facing dangerous water shortages. As world demand for food has soared, millions of farmers have drilled too many irrigation wells in efforts to expand their harvests. As a result, water tables are falling and wells are going dry in some 20 countries containing half the world's people.

Rising Temperatures Melting Away Global Food Security

Heat waves clearly can destroy crop harvests. The world saw high heat decimate Russian wheat in 2010. Crop ecologists have found that each one-degree Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum can reduce grain harvests by 10 percent. But the indirect effects of higher temperatures on our food supply are no less serious.

INDIA: Unfazed by Nuclear Suppliers’ New Rules

Confident in the large market it offers to the world’s nuclear suppliers, India has decided to shrug off new restrictions by a 46-nation cartel on the transfer of uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies that potentially have military applications.

Egypt Rejects IMF Conditions

Egypt has cancelled plans to borrow 3 billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund because of conditions that violated the country’s national sovereignty and a public outcry that warned against terms that were blamed for impoverishing many Egyptians.

U.S.: The Realist Who Moved Washington Closer to Reality

"We are in a multi-polar world now," Robert Gates told a Washington Post columnist within a year of his taking over the Pentagon in early 2007.

The Oxymoron of Political Leadership

Political will is all that's needed to bring electricity to the 2.5 billion people with no or unreliable access to power, or to feed the one billion who go hungry every day, or to finally begin to slash carbon emissions to avoid dangerous climate change, or just about any other global problem.

China Offers a Different Freedom

For a populist premier like China’s Wen Jiabao, the irony of landing in a European capital celebrating the art of one of the Chinese communist party’s most outspoken critics who had been imprisoned by Beijing for months was never lost.

Obama Leaves Door Open to Long-Term U.S. Afghan Combat

President Barack Obama's speech announcing that the 33,000 "surge" troops in Afghanistan will be withdrawn by "summer" 2012 indicates that he has given priority to the interests of the military and the Pentagon over concerns by key officials in his administration over the impact of the war's costs on domestic socioeconomic needs.

Chinese Model Showing Cracks

The Chinese Communist Party likes claiming credit for the success of the country’s model of steady rule and economic prosperity. But as it prepares to celebrate its 90th birthday on Jul. 1, the party has seen the attractive China brand lose appeal with once enthusiastic followers abroad and being outright rejected by violent protests at home.

Postponing Emissions Cuts Carries Steep Price-tag

If we're lucky, by the time a tough but fair international treaty to meet the climate change challenge is finalised, it will be largely unnecessary. The snail's pace of negotiations certainly gives countries plenty of time to understand the financial, social and environmental advantages of kicking their dangerous addiction to fossil fuels.

OP-ED: Experts Fear Israeli Design to Balkanise Arab States

Developments in Libya have raised fears among Egyptian analysts and political figures of the possible break-up of the North African nation into two warring halves. To support the assertion, they point to longstanding Israeli designs - supported by the western powers - to balkanise the Arab states of the region.