POLITICS: North Korea Threat Props Up Japan-US Alliance

By pledging U.S. support for efforts to resolve the issue of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea, visiting President George W. Bush, on Wednesday, hinted at the importance of the alliance in countering Japan’s biggest security threat and also in tackling troubles elsewhere in the world.

POLITICS-US: Republicans Cut and Run from Iraq and Bush

Although he dislikes foreign travel and formal summits, U.S. President George W. Bush must be relieved to be spending this week as an honoured guest in several Asian capitals. According to the stereotype, Asians are unfailingly polite.

POLITICS-US: Congress Sends Mixed Signals on Detainee Rights

As U.S. President George W. Bush's poll numbers plummet, questions about how his administration "sold" the invasion of Iraq to the public and its treatment of prisoners seized in the "war on terror" continue to dog the beleaguered president, stalling his second-term agenda.

EDUCATION-US: Slowly Reversing the 9-11 Slump

The plunge in the number of foreign students enrolling in U.S. colleges and universities after the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks appears to have leveled off over the past year, according to the latest edition of "Open Doors", the annual survey of the Institute of International Education (IIE) released here Monday.

RIGHTS: U.N. Food Expert Condemns U.S. Tactics in Iraq

Jean Ziegler, the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, made waves last month when he accused U.S. and British forces of using food and water as weapons of war in besieged cities in Iraq.

MEDIA-US: Controversial WMD Reporter and NY Times Divorce

Was she an innocent dupe who was played mercilessly by exile chieftain Ahmed Chalabi and his neo-conservative and Pentagon backers who led the march to war with Iraq in March 2003?

HUMAN RIGHTS-US: Exporting Torture

The U.S. government prohibits torture on its own soil, but operates secret prisons in various parts of the world where human rights are regularly violated, maintained political analyst Roberto Montoya and rights activist Miguel Ángel Calderón in interviews with IPS.

RIGHTS: U.N. Blasts Practice of Outsourcing Torture

Six countries - the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Sweden and Kyrgyzstan - have been singled out for violating international human rights conventions by deporting terrorist suspects to countries such as Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Uzbekistan, where they may have been tortured.

DEVELOPMENT: Frustration Builds in Iraq, Afghanistan

Despite increased funding to reconstruct the war-ravaged nations of Iraq and Afghanistan, a lack of security and severely damaged infrastructure are crippling rebuilding efforts in the two countries, two former diplomats said at a discussion in New York Tuesday.

AFGHANISTAN: The Next Quagmire?

Canada and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) could soon find themselves smack dab in the middle of a Colombian-style drug war in Afghanistan, warns a prominent drug control expert.

POLITICS-US: State Elections Add to Republican Gloom

In a new setback to U.S. President George W. Bush's political standing that is certain to fuel the growing disarray within the ruling Republican Party, voters in two politically important states - Virginia and New Jersey - elected Democrats as governors in Tuesday's off-year elections.

POLITICS-US: Cheney Under Siege

Has U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney become so much of an albatross around his boss' neck that he will have to go?

SUMMIT OF THE AMERICAS: FTAA, Unruly Protesters Crash the Party

The opening of the fourth Summit of the Americas Friday was marked by a heated controversy among the hemisphere's leaders over the future of Americas-wide trade integration, while activists caused disturbances outside the 20-block area that was cordoned off for the meeting.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Witnesses Describe Ballot Fraud in Nineveh

Reports compiled by the U.S. military in Iraq from its informants and by non-governmental organisations from independent Iraqi sources provide the first detailed picture of a campaign of ballot fraud by Kurdish authorities in Nineveh province, the key to the outcome of the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum.

RIGHTS-US: Report on Covert Prisons Abroad Spurs UN, EU Probes

Pressure mounted on the George W. Bush administration Thursday to provide details of secret prisons abroad reportedly run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where terror suspects are held incommunicado in dark, sometimes underground cells.

AMERICAS: Counter-Summit Celebrates Rollback of US Influence

Activists taking part in this week's civil society gathering parallel to the fourth Summit of the Americas, which opens Friday in Argentina, are already celebrating what they see as a rolling back of U.S. influence over the hemispheric agenda.

RIGHTS-US: Rumsfeld Rejects U.N. Access to Guantanamo

Amid growing concern over the fate and conditions of inmates engaged in a lengthy hunger strike at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld Tuesday said he would not permit U.N. investigators to interview detainees there.

US: Human Rights End Where Military Prisons Begin

The United States has locked horns once again with international jurists by continuing to insist that detainees being held for alleged terrorist links at its naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba and dozens of other prisons around the world are not subject to the jurisdiction of international human rights treaties.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Reports of Sunni Enthusiasm May Be Premature

The George W. Bush administration is citing the formation of a coalition of Sunni political organisations to run candidates in Iraq's December parliamentary elections, and high Sunni turnout in the recent referendum, as evidence that its policy of attracting Sunnis away from the insurgency is working.

HUMAN RIGHTS-US: Dozens of Abu Ghraibs

U.S. human rights groups have denounced before the U.N. Human Rights Committee that there are perhaps dozens of secret detention centres around the world where Washington is holding an unknown number of prisoners as part of its "war on terror".

POLITICS-US: Frustrated Scowcroft Assails Neo-Cons, Cheney

One week after a top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a blistering attack on foreign policy-making in the George W. Bush administration, Brent Scowcroft, who served as national security adviser under Bush's father, assailed neo-conservatives who persuaded the president to go to war in Iraq.