Eritrea may have committed crimes against humanity, a year-long UN human rights inquiry said in a report published yesterday, describing extrajudicial killings, widespread torture, sexual slavery, and enforced labour.

Guatemala’s vice president has quit amid a customs corruption scandal that has implicated her former private secretary.

There is no country in the world where women have equal status or influence to men, a study shows.

The civil war in Syria has forced a record three million people out of the country and more than a million fled in the past year, the UN refugee agency says.

At least eight massacres have been perpetrated in Syria by President Bashar Assad’s regime and its supporters and one has been carried out by rebels over the past year and a half, a UN commission has said.

Foreign Secretary William Hague has insisted no decision has been be taken on arming Syrian rebels as an international summit on tackling the crisis began in Qatar.

France said it was certain that the nerve agent sarin had been used in Syria on several occasions following tests it carried out on samples.

The head of a UN commission investigating abuses in Syria says it has been collecting evidence about 20 massacres, including three in the central city of Homs since December.

Given that he was cutting such a sorry figure in the Dáil, Enda Kenny’s reluctance to actually apologise seemed even stranger.

Two police officers were indicted for the 2007 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and will face trial along with five members of the Pakistani Taliban, a state prosecutor said.

Turkey is preparing to challenge Israel’s blockade on Gaza at the International Court of Justice, turning up the tension between the once close allies.

A Pakistani court has issued arrest warrants for two senior police officials accused of negligence in the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, a prosecutor said today.

Four decapitated heads were found in prominent areas of Guatemala’s capital today in what police said were probably revenge killings in response to a crackdown on organised crime.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today vowed never to allow Israeli leaders or soldiers to stand trial for war crimes over their actions during last winter’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip, furiously denouncing a recent UN report in a keynote address to parliament.

Argentina staked a claim to a vast area of seabed stretching from South America to the Antarctic in its latest bid for control of the South Atlantic in a historic dispute with the United Kingdom.

Chile has urged Britain to respect a 1959 treaty that bans extracting fuels in the Antarctic.

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern tonight vowed to secure the country’s right to exploit a massive area of seabed rich in oil and gas in the north Atlantic.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has offered to act as an intermediary to resolve the hunger strike 40 Afghans embarked on in a Dublin cathedral over the state’s refusal to grant them asylum, it emerged tonight.

President Bashar Assad of Syria indicated today his rejection of a second request by UN investigators to interview him over the Rafik Hariri assassination, declaring that Syria would not bow to international pressure.

Syria is fighting back hard against the UN inquiry into the killing of a Lebanese politician, touting a witness who now says his testimony against Syrian officials was false. But some in Lebanon say Syria is just manoeuvring to discredit an investigation that could lead to its doorstep.

A man has claimed on Syrian state TV that he was bribed to accuse top Syrian officials of the murder of Rafik Hariri in his testimony to the UN commission into the former Lebanese premier’s assassination.

Syrian Prosecutor-General Ghada Murad has invited the chief UN investigator into the assassination of Rafik Hariri for talks on co-ordinating his probe with Syria’s newly appointed investigation.

A Syrian minister denied threatening assassinated Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, as the US and Britain called for an international stand against Damascus.

The UN Human Rights Commission today passed a resolution condemning Israel’s settlement of the Palestinian territories, saying that Israel should reverse the policy.

RANK-AND-FILE Irish people hold the key which may unlock the Darfur tragedy — and allow UN peacekeepers be deployed to protect the vulnerable.

A UN commission has concluded that the Sudanese government and militias carried out mass killings and probably war crimes in the western Darfur region, but stopped short of calling the violence genocide, according to a newly-released report.