World

Vaccination camps treating thousands of Congolese children were attacked by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) army last month.

The army reneged on a security guarantee it gave to the medical-humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) that runs the camps. Instead, the army used the camps "as bait" to attack members of the independent military group, Rwandan Liberation Democratic Forces (FDLR). MSF had launched a mass vaccination campaign in the DRC's Masisi district to support the DRC Ministry of Health in response to a measles epidemic.

An eruption of war and displacement in east-central Africa is rooted in the complex recent politics of an unsettled region, explains Gérard Prunier.

Since August 2008 the situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has grown progressively worse in ways that seem hard to understand. An overview of the events and processes that led to the resurgence of conflict, however, can explain what is happening and what kind of intervention can contribute to resolving it.

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall last week was a cause for much celebration and received huge coverage in the global media. World leaders descended upon Berlin to celebrate the momentous event which reunited Germany and changed the face of Europe, and the world, forever.  Such high profile celebration was wholly fitting.

The celebrations in commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago have masked the events which propelled the construction of the wall and the reasons for the divisions of Germany and of Europe after the second World War. The wall defused a dispute that hung over from that war, a dispute that could have resulted in far worse consequences, possibly a nuclear conflict in the heart of Europe. The background to that is significant.

Editor's Pick: This article by Fidel Castro advocates a Nobel Prize for Evo Morales for his work in reducing infant mortality, illiteracy and improving healthcare for Bolivians.

If Obama was awarded the Nobel for winning the elections in a racist society despite his being African American, Evo deserves it for winning them in his country despite his being a native and his having delivered on his promises. By Fidel Castro Ruz.

Michael Moore's Expose of "Dead Peasant" insurance policies is too shocking even for Good Morning America to ignore.

Michael Moore's latest film, 'Capitalism, A Love Story' has revealed a deep dark secret to the intrepid reporters of ABC News - so-called "Dead Peasant Insurance", the practice of companies taking out secret life insurance policies on their low-level employees, with the benefits paid out to the company upon the employee's death, even if they no longer work at the company.

 

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is a disappointment at first. It is just 2,711 dark grey concrete slabs, spread over 4.7 acres on a site close to the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, across the road from the hideous new US embassy, 100 yards or so from the remains of the bunker where Hitler committed suicide on April 30,1945.

You feel nothing like the initial awe you get in front of Picasso’s Guernica in the Reina Sofia museum in Madrid. The initial impression at Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial is of blandness.

Coverup exposes a tale of politics, drugs, hostages, weapons, assassinations, covert operations and the ultimate plan to suspend the US Constitution.