KOSOVO: Probes into Misuse of EU Money Stall – Part 1

This year the European Union plans to spend an additional 70 million euros to help Kosovo work its way towards the goal of becoming a member state. But it has no plan to dig further into the alleged misuse of European taxpayers' money that has been unresolved for the last 10 years.

MEDIA-PAKISTAN: Caught Between the Army and the Taliban

Journalists covering the United States-led ‘war-on-terror’ in Pakistan’s turbulent northwest are not sure who wants them out of the way more – the Taliban or the Pakistan army.

LIBYA: New Chapter Opens After Gaddafi

Libyan children will go back to school without Muammar Gaddafi’s ubiquitous presence, despite a lack of new books.

HONDURAS: Dying for Land

The deployment of large numbers of troops in the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras is reviving the age-old conflict over land in an area torn between organised crime groups capable of undertaking armed actions, wealthy landowners and peasants demanding further land reform.

CIA’s Push for Drone War Driven by Internal Needs

When David Petraeus walks into the Central Intelligence Agency Tuesday, he will be taking over an organisation whose mission has changed in recent years from gathering and analysing intelligence to waging military campaigns through drone strikes in Pakistan, as well as in Yemen and Somalia.

TRINIDAD: State of Emergency in More Ways Than One

Ancel Roget believes he knows why the Trinidad and Tobago government imposed a State of Emergency (SOE) on Aug. 21 and used its majority in the Parliament to extend it for another three months.

OP-ED: Al-Qaeda Lost the Battle Long Ago

Osama bin Laden didn't live to see the 10th anniversary of Sep. 11. And his organisation, according to many U.S. government insiders, is on its last legs since his death at the hands of U.S. Special Forces in May. "We're within reach of strategically defeating Al-Qaeda," Defence Secretary Leon Panetta recently observed. Others disagree, pointing to the strength of Al-Qaeda in Yemen.

Politics Clouds Efforts to Ban Nuclear Testing

On Aug. 29, 1949, the Soviet Union conducted the first of 456 nuclear tests in Semipalatinsk in Eastern Kazakhstan, at the site where it ultimately held over two-thirds of all Soviet nuclear tests without warning inhabitants of the region of the impact of exposure to these tests.

BRAZIL: Rousseff Winning Allies in Undeclared War on Corruption

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is starting to gain support for a war on corruption that she is quietly waging.

INDIA: Campuses Lead Gay Rights Struggle

It was with some trepidation that Nivvedan, a student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Bombay, helped launch ‘Saathi’ (Companion), catering to the needs of people with different sexual orientations on campus.

ISRAEL: Netanyahu Besieged, From Within and Without

More and more Israelis seem to realise that the only policy that causes bad luck is bad policy. In a fortnight, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu found himself politically besieged from within and from without.

SRI LANKA: Less Guns Mean More Food

As paddy cultivation revives in Sri Lanka’s former war zones, prospects for the island’s food security have improved dramatically.

EGYPT: Mubarak Faces Court Without the Circus

With the trial of Hosni Mubarak set to resume Monday, attorneys representing the families of protesters killed during Egypt’s uprising are trying to cut out the deadwood in their midst.

JAPAN: Fukushima Blows Lid Off Exploited Labour

The Fukushima disaster has thrown up the first opportunity in decades to bring justice to thousands of unskilled workers who risk radioactive contamination to keep Japan’s nuclear power plants running.

MEXICO: Murders of Reporters Heighten Despair and Shock

"And how do you escape this anxiety, this sensation that nothing we do does any good?" a Mexican journalist wrote on her Facebook page after the murder of two of her colleagues in Mexico City.

Q&A: “Civilians Should Not Suffer the Effects of the Armed Conflict” in Colombia

Indigenous people in the province of Cauca in southwest Colombia want their territory to be free of war, and are organising a protest march to demand that the police and military close down their bases and the guerrillas abandon their camps in the native reservations in the north of this mountainous province.

Flotilla Report Leaks, Turkey Expels Israeli Ambassador

A highly anticipated and controversial report on Israel's May 2010 interception of an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip and subsequent killing of nine civilians and wounding of many others was finally leaked on Thursday, as diplomatic relations between Israel and Turkey continued to deteriorate.

NIGERIA: Lax Security Reason for U.N. Bombing

Security experts say that unless something is done to regulate the high level of illicit transactions and proliferation of commercial explosives in Nigeria, scenes like the United Nations suicide bombing will become more frequent.

/CORRECTED REPEAT*/: U.S. Awash in Oil and Lies, Report Charges

With four times as many oil rigs pumping domestic oil today than eight years ago and declining domestic demand, the United States is awash in oil.

MALAWI: Government Becomes a One-Man Show

For the last two weeks, Malawi’s president has been running the country’s 22 ministries on his own after firing his entire cabinet. But political and economic analysts say that his delay in appointing a new cabinet is detrimental to the country’s development. Some analysts say government has come to a standstill because of this, while others say the situation shows that the president has lost control.

OP-ED: Manipulating Social Networks

If there's one thing that net-savvy activists from Tunisia to Bahrain are aware of, it’s that the Internet isn’t always safe. From the constant threat of surveillance to the knowledge that posting the wrong picture on Facebook can get you arrested - or worse - activists have for a long time taken measures to mitigate risks, censoring themselves, using special tools like Tor, or staying off certain networks altogether.