A corrupt, underdeveloped and war-scarred country, Angola is one of the poorest lands on earth. But ask any energy executive these days and another picture emerges: a place of immense riches, solicitous of foreign investors and among the t…

Somali rebels dragged the bodies of two soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu today after a government assault on insurgent forces.In scenes reminiscent of what happed after a US helicopter was shot down over the city in 1993, witnesse…

PESHAWAR, Pakistan: Fierce fighting between foreign militants and local tribesmen in northern Pakistan in the past few days has left at least 58 people dead, government and security officials said Tuesday.Among the dead were 42 militants f…

It was Mr Mubarak who first proposed the 34 amendments. They include a formal ban on political parties being established on the basis of religion and changes to electoral laws - both of which are deemed to target the Muslim Brotherhood, th…

But the Israeli government retains control over all of Gaza's border crossings, except for the transit point to Egypt; the strip's airspace and coastal waters; and the population registry used to assign Palestinian identity cards. The Unit…

BAGHDAD -- U.S. troops are conducting security sweeps in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City for the first time in three years, part of a revamped plan to pacify the capital. Yet the Mahdi Army militia of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has n…

SINGAPORE: Some countries have strategic oil reserves; others stockpile rice or wheat. The island nation of Singapore has emergency reserves of imported sand.The sand is there to secure Singapore's insatiable demand for concrete, a reminde…

BAGHDAD -- For three years, thousands of members of a militant group dedicated to overthrowing Iran's theocracy have lived in a sprawling compound north of Baghdad under the protection of the U.S. military.American soldiers chauffeur top l…

The EU foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, today urged Syria to help stabilise Lebanon and Iraq during a visit that marked a thaw in EU relations with Damascus.Mr Solana said the EU supported Syria's long-held goal of regaining the occupi…

It has been a year since "Ma Ellen," the first woman elected president in Africa, began to lay a solid foundation for her country. Johnson-Sirleaf has shown that one of her principle themes is elevating women in all sectors of society. And…

Some Iraqi cities, including the oil- producing enclave of Basra, buy electricity from Iran. The Iraqi government is relying on Iranian companies to bring gasoline from Turkmenistan to alleviate a severe shortage. Iraqi officials are revie…

ON THE whole, life in Uganda has been improving. In the past year, the Lord's Resistance Army, a sadistic rebel militia which had made a hell out of the north of the country for two decades, retreated to Congo and has been drawn into peace…

Three years ago the Israel-Palestine Centre for Research and Information (IPCRI), a think-tank in Jerusalem, conducted studies of some school textbooks on both sides. It found gradual improvements over previous years, but still a lot of pr…

The men belong to a new militant Islamic organization called Fatah al Islam, whose leader, a fugitive Palestinian named Shakir al-Abssi, has set up operations in a refugee camp here where he trains fighters and spreads the ideology of Al Q…

The four most significant objectives identified by the administration in January were: approval of an oil law that would set guidelines for nationwide distribution of oil revenues and foreign investment in the immense oil industry; reversa…

JERUSALEM: A government-appointed committee examining Israel's failures during last summer's war in Lebanon is to publish an interim report in the second half of April apportioning personal responsibility to top officials, heightening unce…

JERUSALEM: An up-to-date Israeli government register shows that 32.4 percent of the property held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is private, according to the advocacy group that sued the government to obtain the data.The …

PESHAWAR, Pakistan ― Along the Afghan border, not far from this northwestern city, Islamic militants have used a firm foothold over the past year to train and dispatch suicide bombers against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.But in …

MOSCOW, March 13 ― A United Nations observer mission in Georgia on Tuesday opened an investigation into missile attacks in three remote Georgian villages, and the initial evidence suggested that Russian helicopter gunships were involved.Th…

Rufina Amaya, the woman who was often identified as the last, or only, survivor of the massacre at the village of El Mozote, died last week. She was not, strictly speaking, the only survivor of that monstrous event, but she appears to have…

UNITED NATIONS, March 13 -- Sudan's president has rejected the core elements of a plan to send U.N. peacekeepers to Darfur to help protect civilians from a government-backed campaign of violence.The move set the stage for a renewed push by…

Rwandan fighters are covertly crossing into neighbouring Congo in an attempt to hunt down militia responsible for the 1994 genocide.Several hundred Rwandans have secretly infiltrated the Congolese army's new "mixed brigades", amalgams of r…

Cornelis Brouwenstijn was forced to surrender his black leather wallet when he entered Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany in 1944. Inside it the 22-year-old, a handsome blond Dutch Jew, had tucked his passport, ration cards,…

The votes held on March 11th in 14 of Russia's 86 regions (United Russia won in the 13 other than Stavropol) marked the start of a political season that will culminate in elections for the Duma this December and for the presidency next Mar…

NABLUS, West Bank: Their worried parents call them the lost generation of Palestine: its most radical, most accepting of violence, and most despairing.They are the children of the second intifada that began in 2000, growing up in a territo…

His claims for reparations, and hundreds more like them from those displaced in the turmoil of 1945 threaten to make Angela Merkel's visit to Warsaw, which begins today, her most delicate diplomatic mission as German Chancellor.The two cou…

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged No 3 in al-Qaida, confessed to personally beheading the kidnapped US journalist Daniel Pearl, according to an updated transcript of his appearance before a military tribunal issued today."I decapitated w…

A US federal judge blamed Sudan for the first time yesterday for the al-Qaida attack on the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 seamen. The judge, Robert Doumar, said there was "substantial evidence" to support the claim.The accusation comes a…

The latest episode in this historical tradition has several distinguishing characteristics. First, Western forces - while better armed and technologically superior - are far too few in number. Today's Western force totals about 40,000 troo…

BOSTON: Sixty years ago Monday, Harry Truman went before a joint session of Congress to announce what became known as the Truman Doctrine. "At the present moment in world history, nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of…