Famously dubbed the "mad dog of the Middle East" by former President Ronald Reagan, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has a reputation that has run the gamut from eccentric revolutionary to international pariah over his long career. Often seen swathed in animal skins and surrounded by a posse of virgin female bodyguards, the colorful leader has become as well known for his unusual personality as for his controversial political moves, the latest of which included celebrating convicted ...

As we reach the end of a miserable 2009, signs continue to mount across the globe that the world economy is stirring back to life. The U.S. finally returned to growth in the third quarter, with its strongest showing in two years, India posted inspiring 7.9% growth and the results out of tiny Taiwan, one of the economies slammed the hardest by the global recession, were so impressive one economist beamed that the island "got its groove on." Stock ...

President Barack Obama's year of outreach to Iran has succeeded in putting it on the diplomatic defensive: that much was clear from Friday's blunt reproach of Tehran by the International Atomic Energy Agency's board. But it's less clear that Obama can convert that diplomatic advantage into sanctions that will curtail Iran's nuclear program. "The question is," says one senior Democratic aide in Congress, "Can Obama pivot [from engagement to sanctions] and succeed in changing conditions on the ground?" Iran ...

A top Taliban political leader delivered a message Friday to President Obama, calling his attempt to lure away Taliban fighters with money "an old weapon that has failed already." Obama meets Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who will tell the U.S. leader how a large deployment to Afghanistan would affect the military. Akhund warned Obama against maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan, saying it "will only deepen your economic crisis and will harm your international reputation." "Pull all ...

The group that controls top-level domain codes for Internet addresses is poised to permit non-Latin language codes for the first time in its history. And if, as expected, it does move forward, it means that Web surfing is about to get easier for about half of the world's 1.6 billion Internet users. "There are over 40 million users in the Arab world," said Wael Ghanim, Google's product and marketing manager for the Middle East and Africa, "and this number ...

Terrace crowds are controlled by men wearing army fatigues and holding Kalashnikov rifles, players and press pray on the pitch at half-time and when the final whistle is blown, the trophy is handed to the winning captain by one of Israel's most wanted men.International military forces have been treating the case as a "potential hijacking," Lt. Ian Jones of Britain's Royal Navy told CNN Tuesday. "We have no confirmation that anything has been pirated," he added. There are many ...

Over the last two decades humanitarian organization International Medical Corps has cared for hundreds of thousands of victims of wars and natural disasters in more than 25 countries.

"Lions hate circuses" has long been a bumper sticker slogan of the animal rights movement, and Bolivia has heard the message: The left-leaning government of the Andean country recently passed the world's first legislation prohibiting the use of all animals in circuses. That's a huge victory for the London-based organization Animal Defenders International , which agitated for the ban. But it has left the organization, and others like it, facing the challenge of finding homes for 22 ...

Israel is denying Palestinians access to adequate water supplies by controlling shared water resources, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a report released Tuesday.He said that Israeli consumption of water from the mountain aquifer had gone down in absolute terms from 1967 to today, despite the fact that Israel's population had more than doubled in that time to its current level of approximately 7 million people. A statement from the Israeli Foreign Ministry charges that the authors of ...

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has successfully brought dozens of war criminals to justice, but a "truth commission" is still necessary if the region's ethnic factions are ever to achieve lasting reconciliation, according to a former legal adviser to the court.