A US-based rights group has urged Vietnam to investigate what it called widespread police brutality. In a statement, Human Rights Watch said it had documented 19 cases of police brutality in the past 12 months, resulting in the deaths of 15 people. It...

In the outskirts of this city, Libya’s second largest, row after row of sand-colored concrete apartment blocks and villas are sprouting from the desert. Hundreds of kilometers away, construction cranes dot the Mediterranean skyline of the capital,...

Uruguay has promised to water down anti-smoking laws after pressure from the tobacco giant Philip Morris, prompting accusations of corporate bullying. The government said it would amend legislation which slaps large health warnings on cigarette packets...

A Colombian model accused of leading a drug-trafficking gang that persuaded pretty young women to smuggle cocaine to Mexico was arrested yesterday after evading Argentine police for five months. Angie Sanclemente Valencia had been hiding out in Buenos...

Much of reproductive rights activism is squarely centred on the right to have access to birth control and abortion. But while this remains an important factor in securing women’s rights, the right to become a mother is a paramount issue to...

The severed head and torso of a man has been found in a temple in the Indian state of West Bengal in what the police say is a case of “human sacrifice”. The head and the body were found at the local temple to the goddess Kali near...

Saudi Arabia has a serious child-marriage problem. It’s emblematic of the nation’s struggle between modernity and traditional Islam. But the lives of thousands of little girls are being destroyed as the Saudi government ponderously debates a...

At first sight it seems the ultimate in child cruelty - a two-year-old boy chained to a lamp post to stop him getting away. Yet his parents say this is the only way they can guarantee not to lose him. His father Chen Chuanliu works as an unlicensed...