Elections

Gunmen from a pro-Syrian Palestinian organization shot at people during a protest at a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus on Monday, WAFA, the official Palestinian news agency, reported on Tuesday. A reported 14 people died in the attack.

South Korea's Ban Ki-moon said he will run for a second five-year term as secretary-general of the United Nations."It has been an enormous privilege to lead this great organization," Ban, 66, said yesterday at a news conference at UN headquarters in New York. "If supported by the member states, I would be deeply honoured to serve once more."Ban said he expressed his intention in a letter to the governments of the 192 UN member nations and would meet with their envoys with...

The former head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has appeared in a New York court where he faces charges of sexual assault, unlawful imprisonment and attempting to rape a hotel maid last month. He was arrested by the New York police while boarding an Air France plane that was about to take off for Paris.

41 years ago, the Corrective Revolution put Hafez al-Assad, father of current president Bashar al-Assad, in control of Syria, a country he would rule for three decades.

As Zimbabwe's next elections, originally planned for 2011, are now called into question, the media in the West as well as in Africa announce that "divisions are re-surfacing in Zimbabwe's constitutional-revision process as the ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe has accused the Movement for Democratic Change of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai of dragging out the process to postpone elections."

Early in the morning of 26 May 2011, a force from Serbia's Security and Information Agency (BIA) captured and arrested Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic in the village of Lazarevo, about 50 miles north of Belgrade, the Serbian capital, to where he was promptly removed.

A senior Egyptian general has admitted that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested during the demonstrations of the Arab Spring in Egypt. The confirmation of the allegations, that were first brought up by Amnesty International, comes after the military authorities had repeatedly and firmly denied such claims.

The FA has released a statement calling for the FIFA presidential election to be postponed - and called for a 'genuinely independent' external party to look into how to improve FIFA.

Just a day after Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's coalition suffered a crushing defeat in local elections, the trial of the Italian leader is today due to resume.

G8 countries which include leaders from brings together the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with the leaders of the US, Britain, Germany, Japan, Russia, Canada and Italy have today come up with a pledge of £12bn in aid, loans and debt relief in an attempt to support and enhance pro-democratic regimes in the region. While the full details of the package are yet unknown, the money will come from international financial institutions and members of the G8.Both the leaders of Egypt and Tunisi...

Following the U.S. President's European trip, critics in the United States have claimed the president is using it as a way to deflect attention from the domestic issues that preoccupy Americans. For several months, Barack Obama's ratings on the economy have plummeted which, given that the 2012 election approaches, cannot be good news for the President.

FIFA is coming under scrutiny again for the way that the global organisation is run. This article looks at a history of accusations.

Alex Salmond was today sworn in to the role of First Minister a day after his re-election by MSPs.

Nominations for the election of a new Scottish Liberal Democrat leader close today, Tuesday,17 May 2011 at midday. This follows the resignation of Tavish Scott, MSP for the Shetland Isles after the Lib Dem's disastrous 05 May 2011 Election results for the Scottish Parliament reduced their membership to five.

The sexual assault charges against IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New York and his arrest have sent shockwaves across Europe, but how will it impact on the French political scene?

Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the 25th of April 1949 he spent part of his childhood in Agadir, Morocco. He was raised by socialist parents and accumulated diplomas from France's most prestigious schools including from Paris' top business and political schools, HEC and Sciences-Po but failed the entrance exam to l'ENA, which grooms France's future presidents. He went on to get a degree in public law and a PHD in economics.

After being arrested on Saturday over allegations of serious sexual assault, Dominique Strauss-Khan has made his first public appearance handcuffed and surrounded by policeman. He was taken to an unknown location while waiting for his hearing to start in a Manhattan court later on today.

What do Sayeeda Warsi, Susan Kramer and Oona King all have in common? All three are from different political parties, but yet they share these characteristics - they are all women, they are all from ethnic/religious minorities and they are all failed politicians - so naturally it makes sense that they should all three be baronesses as well.

The election of the Scottish National Party in last Thursday’s elections to the Scottish Parliament shocked Great Britain and could even lead to the break-up of the United Kingdom. Yet the SNP is just the latest of many separatist movements to show signs of success, here we look at some of them and their leaders.

The likelihood of a breakup of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland looked ominously closer today after the separatist Scottish National Party won an overall majority in elections for the devolved Scottish government.

Local election results from across England have pointed to a strengthening of both the Conservative and Labour parties, while the Liberal Democrats have taken a battering.

It's Thursday, 05 May 2011 and the British are being given the opportunity to decide in a Referendum on whether or not to change the way the electorate votes and chooses its MPs. On offer, is sticking with the current system of electing one outright winner who simply gets the largest number of votes cast, commonly known as "First-past-the-post" (FPTP) or, to change to an Alternative Voting system (AV) whereby the winning candidate must obtain more than 50 per cent of all votes cast - m...

Prime Minister David Cameron has called on Conservative Party supporters to "do everything" they can to ensure that voters reject a proposed change to Britain's electoral system.

This week the former President and military ruler of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, said he believed that "a good dictatorship is better than a bad democracy".

The imposition of a no-fly zone in Libya has succeeded in one thing at least: it has enforced a stalemate onto what was seemingly the opening moves of the Libyan civil war.

The civil war in Libya, the length and result of which is of course unknown, has shown the USA and the European powers to be sufferers of what Winston Churchill once described as a "disease of the will".

Libya appears to be in, or at least on the verge of, a civil war between Colonel Gaddafi loyalists and armed rebels who just a few weeks ago were merely anti-government protestors.

When it was announced that this week's edition of BBC Question Time would be held in Barking it occurred to me that the BBC might be planning to spring a little surprise by having British National Party leader Nick Griffin on the show again.

This week the No to AV campaign started to lay out its case to the British people ahead of a May referendum on changing the voting system. It was a poor start to what should be an easy task.

The IMF estimates the U.S. gross outstanding public debt to GDP ratio at approximately 100% for 2011. Not good, but the U.S. can point to Japan and Italy as having higher ratios. But probably not many think that Japan's dismal economic picture is one that the U.S. should try to model itself on. Italy also has more than its share of economic issues and an economic framework that not many countries aspire to.