Latin America

The Ecuadorean government declared U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges “persona non grata” and expelled her from the country in response to a cable released by the Wikileaks whistleblower web site.

Rather belatedly, Latin America is beginning to test products imported from Japan to check that they are not contaminated with radioactivity from the Fukushima nuclear power station that was severely damaged by the Mar. 11 earthquake and tsunami.

The influx of migrants arriving from Libya and other African countries has created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in southern Italy.

Reasserting effective civilian control over the Honduran armed forces, after a coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, will require constitutional reform and a greater grasp by society on defense issues.

Despite the clear opposition of the Barack Obama administration and apparent ambivalence on the part of the right-wing government in Israel, neo-conservative hawks here have set their sights on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who they hope will be the next domino to fall to the so-called “Arab Spring”.

Widely praised as an effective defense of Washington’s 10-day- old military intervention in Libya, President Barack Obama’s speech Monday evening appears to have left several key questions about his future intentions unanswered.

A new week, a new campaign for Ankara’s diplomacy. After a victorious arm-twisting on Saturday with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to divert the leadership of the aerial war against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi from France to NATO, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has turned his attention to trouble closer to home, Syria.

When the trunks of the trees move with every step you take, you know you are in a swamp. This is what happens when you walk over the seemingly firm and vegetation-covered ground over what was once a pit used to dump oil sludge in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest.

To many Serbs, the action against Libya brought back the traumatic memories of bombing that left some 2,500 dead and profoundly devastated the country’s infrastructure.

The revolution contagion sweeping across the Arab countries has spread to Syria leading to rare protests challenging the grip of the ruling Baath Party on the country. The regime was quick to describe the turmoil as a foreign-inspired plot aimed at punishing the country for its support of groups opposed to U.S. and Israeli policies in the region.