Region

Iraq is on the brink of disintegration as Sunni militants seize more towns and now set their sights on the capital Baghdad. In the past few days, al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) have seized control of Mosul,…

By the Municipal Citizens’ Observatories Over half a million people now have access to real participation in their municipality The OCMs: citizen bodies to control local governments After two years of work at the Spanish Citizen Debt Audit Platform (PACD),…

They have all of them reached the airport by now in a swarm of bodyguards. Pietro Grasso, Chairman of the Italian Senate,  a nice stocky typically sicilian man. Orlando, the Minister of Justice, Filippo Spataro, the Mayor of Comiso, bravely…

Speaking at the White House, President Obama urged a national “soul searching” on gun control. He also called congressional inaction a source of “shame.” President Obama: “It’s not the only country that has psychosis, and yet we kill each other…

TED: Writer Jimmy Guterman takes society’s temperature and digs into the reasons we’re all talking about inequality. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is a book of our moment. It may be the most unlikely egghead highbrow bestseller since…

Most “friendly fire” incidents do not get reported. Sometimes they come to light, a few here and there but the full extent of the damage caused during war by inaccurate identification or calculation, or care, is generally underplayed, as it…

In Brazil, subway workers have suspended a five-day strike over wages but warned it could resume in time for Thursday’s opening match of the World Cup. On Monday meanwhile, striking teachers protested in Rio de Janeiro. Maria de Lurdes Fonseca:…

With ex-army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi sworn in as Egypt’s president, Washington has promised that it will cooperate with his government. Are US-Egyptian ties returning to the Mubarak-era status quo of military rule? More than three years ago, US President Barack…

By Roberto Savio Reprint In this column, Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News, argues that it is time to rethink the Seven Deadly Sins in the light…

Alan Turing, 1912 –1954, was a British mathematician, logician cryptanalyst, compute scientist and philosopher. He was highly influential in the development of computer science, providing a formalisation of the concepts of “algorithm” and “computation” with the Turing machine, which can be…