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.

Lagarde Takes Helm of IMF Amidst Multiple Crises

Two days ahead of a formal vote scheduled for Jun. 30, former French finance minister Christine Lagarde became the first woman to be appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), headquartered in Washington, Tuesday.

MIDEAST: Confrontation Begins Before the Sailing

Activists are engaged in a harsh confrontation with Israeli authorities days before the international ‘Freedom Flotilla II – Stay Human’ sets sail towards the Gaza strip in an attempt to break the naval blockade Israel has imposed since 2007.

TURKEY-ISRAEL: Diplomatic Wounds Leave Half-Healed Scars

Turkey and Israel are close to resolving their dispute over last year's flotilla fiasco, but the partnership that existed between them for more than a decade will almost certainly stay submerged.

Days Ahead of Official Election, Lagarde ‘Crowned’ IMF Chief

In a small park situated between the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United States Department of the Treasury in Washington, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde was crowned head of the world's most powerful monetary institution on Thursday.

Once, There Was Yugoslavia

For decades, the former Yugoslavia was a communist country with a human face, whose nations enjoyed high standards of living compared to other Eastern Europeans, visa-free travel abroad, and participatory government. Twenty years ago, on Jun. 25, all that ended.

ITALY: ‘They Saw Numbers, We Saw People’

It’s only a few hundred metres from the rocky hillside overlooking Lampedusa’s commercial port to the other side of the protected bay. For more than a decade this narrow strip of ocean has been a migratory gateway into Europe for tens of thousands of mostly African migrants. The numbers have risen and fallen in response to shifting government policies and geopolitical developments.

ITALY: Refugees Find Easier Reception, For Now

It’s 4.30 in the morning and the full moon is low in the sky above Lampedusa harbour as the Guardia di Finanza patrol boat escorts a fishing boat containing 19 Tunisian migrants into the closed military port. They include six women, one child and – to the amusement of the Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) team - one sheep. The migrants are driven away in a coach to one of the two holding centres, some of them wrapped in silver emergency blankets. But the sheep remains in the port.

OP-ED: Drilling Deep Mistakes in the Arctic

Nuuk is a long way from my hometown of Durban, and the Arctic is a long way for an African to come to campaign about climate change. Yet, here I sit, in a jail cell, with my colleague Ulvar Arnkvaern, in the ‘Institution’, a prison in Greenland’s capital. I sit here for breaching an exclusion zone and climbing aboard a dangerous deep water drilling rig some 120 km off Greenland’s coast.

ICELAND: New Energy Stinks, And Worse

Public health authorities in Reykjavik have criticised plans for the expansion of the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant. They say that levels of the gas hydrogen sulphide could increase by 40 percent if a new geothermal field, Grauhnukur, is developed and nothing is done to ensure that the levels of the gas remain below maximum permitted levels.

Greek PM Talks Tough Amid Worsening Crisis

George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, has vowed to pursue reforms aimed at tiding over the country's crippling debt crisis, despite popular resentment.

POLAND: Transgender Rights in Forefront of Equality Parade

About 5,000 people attended the Equality Parade in Polish capital Warsaw this weekend. Among them, the country’s first transgender rights activists, who in the last couple of years have made great strides in gaining recognition for the country’s transgender community.

BALKANS: Serbia Promoting Partition of Kosovo

For most of the world the issue of Kosovo is long over. The nation declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and has gained recognition from 76 out of 192 U.N. member states.

ICC Urged to Accept ‘Ecocide’ as an International Crime

Images of the immense, dark stain of oil covering the waters of the Gulf of Mexico made their way across the globe last year as one of the largest oil spills in history unfolded. Other images - of the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, a gigantic pile of litter floating in the North Pacific Ocean; of countless felled trees in the Amazon; of tar sands in Canada - have gained much fewer headlines, but are likely to remain as monuments to the price tag of wanton human appetites.

Climate Regulatory Gap Could Result After 2012 Kyoto Expiration

The growing awareness that the ongoing U.N. climate change talks here won't deliver a treaty to extend the international governance regime on reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2012, is driving environmental experts to foster alternative solutions to global warming.

Moussa Seeks to Calm Arab Countries ‘Privately’

Leaving his position as secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa is now a "private citizen" as he prepares to contest the Egyptian presidential election. And as a private citizen there is little he can do officially to fight government crackdown on citizens across parts of the Arab world, he tells IPS in an interview.

Fresh Vegetables Endangering Health Again

The deadly epidemic of escherichia coli (EHEC) in Germany, that broke out in mid May, and which has killed 29 people so far, is the latest in a series of food and hygiene emergencies that have shaken European households for more than a decade.

Turkish PM ‘To Govern for All’ After Poll Win

Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has won a third term in parliament, winning nearly 50 percent of the vote in the country's general election.

CARIBBEAN: Key Committee Pushes Forward Trade Pact with Europe

The inaugural meeting of the Trade and Development Committee (TDC) of a sweeping trade pact between Caribbean nations and the European Union is being hailed as a success by regional diplomats.

EUROPE: Turkish election campaign enters final hours

The leaders of Turkey's political parties have staged their final rallies before the country goes to the polls on Sunday in parliamentary elections with crucial consequences for the nation's future.

As Britain Sees a Needy Child

The British Home Office has ruled that a severely disabled five-year-old girl should be returned to Algeria. The ruling demonstrates just how tough some European governments are getting on immigration.