A meeting of global power brokers in a Hertfordshire hotel is exciting conspiracy theorists, but what are they really about?

China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, will confer with President Barack Obama next month in California, months earlier than expected, as both sides seek to stem a drift in relations troubled by issues from cyber-spying to North Korea.

David Randall looks for the truth

David Cameron plans to use Britain’s presidency of the G8 leading industrialised nations to spearhead a new international drive to boost dementia research.

The solution to world poverty may have been under our noses all along. The United Nations has issued official advice suggesting that Earth’s inhabitants eat insects to help combat food-insecurity and reduce pollution worldwide.

A new biography denounces the U2 singer's anti-poverty campaigning, and his personal tax arrangements. But his starry chums – such as Bill Clinton – are fighting back

But talks appeared to provide little concrete progress in search for solution to the crisis

Deputy foreign minister, Faisal Muqdad, indicates that weapons inspectors would be allowed into the country to perform tests

Judges say the strikes must be declared a war crime as they kill innocent people

The deadly nerve agent sarin does appear to have been used by Bashar Assad’s regime during Syria’s two-year civil war according to a “growing body of limited but persuasive information”, David Cameron has told MPs.

Regime and rebels will be invited to attend after John Kerry strikes deal with Sergei Lavrov in Moscow

Prince of Wales will represent the UK as Palace dismisses suggestion that move is related to political situation in country

Food rationing for refugees planned as $650m pledged to UN remains undelivered

Fight to protect haloumi could deepen the enmity on this divided island

The United Nations has admitted that a delay in declaring a famine in Somalia in 2011 cost additional lives, after a new report revealed that more than a quarter of a million people died, half of them young children.