South African President Jacob Zuma landed in Tripoli Sunday to meet with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to discuss a resolution to the ongoing crisis. The United Nations Security Council mandated no-fly zone was briefly lifted in order to allow Zuma and his entourage to arrive directly in Tripoli, the first high-profile delegation from international leaders since the start of the crisis. Meanwhile, other members of the African Union plan to go to the rebel-held capital Benghazi on ...

Israeli officials say it so often they've taken to apologizing for using the example, acknowledging it's become a clich: Israel and Hamas can lob shells into and out of the Gaza Strip indefinitely without risking actual war, the explanation begins. Each side wants to appear tough, and over four years the call and response has grown as delicately calibrated as a minuet. But should one of Hamas' hastily fired, unguided rockets happen to land on a kindergarten, ...

Part 1 of TIME's Return to Baghdad series. An hour after landing at Baghdad International Airport, I found myself stuffed into the backseat of a blue station wagon, clenching my fists to keep my hands from shaking. The first time I drove this road was more than 4 years ago in a Bradley fighting vehicle. The road, known to Americans as Route Irish, was one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. Units before us had dubbed it ...

The U.S. invasion of Haiti would commence not with the blazing of guns but with the quiet ripples of Navy SEALS making their way ashore. Under cover of darkness -- a key ally in the Pentagon's invasion plan -- they would drift apart and stealthily make their way to the country's major airport, on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince. Their mission: to make sure no surprises were in store for the thousands of U.S. combat troops that would follow. "One truck ...

For weeks, the U.N.'s mission in the Ivory Coast has sat pinned down in its quarters, watching as this West African country lurched toward civil war. An escalating conflict between the rival forces of Laurent Gbagbo and Alassane Ouattara has led to hundreds, probably thousands of deaths and has displaced, by some counts, over a million people in this nation of 22 million. In early March, the International Crisis Group, a global conflict watchdog, slammed the U.N. ...

In 1980, an international treaty was designed to return children who had been abducted by a parent who moved to another country. Back then, the people drafting the treaty thought the typical abductor would be a noncustodial father skipping town with the kids, leaving mom with little recourse to try to get her children back. So what happens, three decades later, when research indicates that 68% of the abducting parents in cases under this treaty are mothers ...

There was nothing very special about the message that made Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel the most hated couple in cyberspace. It was a relatively straightforward advertisement offering the services of their husband-and-wife law firm to aliens interested in getting a green card -- proof of permanent-resident status in the U.S. The computer that sent the message was a perfectly ordinary one as well: an IBM-type PC parked in the spare bedroom of their ranch-style house in Scottsdale, Arizona. But ...

The struggle has been defined variously as rich v. poor, Southern Hemisphere v. Northern, developed countries v. undeveloped. The protagonists are the advanced industrial nations v. the nations of the "Third World" , an extraordinarily diverse group that, for the moment at least, has achieved solidarity for what it sees as its common purpose. Conflict between the two groups has taken on the proportions of global class war. This week the battleground is situated on the banks of the ...

At least 800 people were slaughtered in the western Ivory Coast town of Duekoue on March 29, the International Committee of the Red Cross said, as it became the latest town caught in the spiral of post-electoral violence engulfing the country. Caritas, a Roman Catholic charity, estimated the death toll was 1,000. Duekoue resident Bonfil Zahe narrowly escaped death that day. Along with six companions, the 62-year-old was stopped at a makeshift checkpoint in the early afternoon. ...

The e-mail looks like a scam: "I have to come up with big-time cash," writes Max Stephenson. The 18-year-old is headed for New York University, he explains, but his mom is on disability, his dad works three jobs, and all his grants and loans only cover half of the school's $50,000 annual tab. So to cover the gap, he's hoping 10,000 friends of friends of friends will each put $2.50 in the mail or send the money via PayPal. "If you're worried ...