The international community's reliance on United Nations peacekeeping continues to deepen. Deployment is at a record high, with the number of troops, civilians and police totaling more than 113,000.

Japan and the European Union condemned North Korea's reported nuclear test as a violation of U.N. sanctions, as several leaders, including President Barack Obama, suggested Monday that they would bring the matter to the Security Council.

Health officials today sought to find ways to increase the global supply of vaccines that could be used to protect the world's most vulnerable people against H1N1 flu.

Sri Lankan troops advanced on the Tamil Tigers yesterday and 5,000 civilians fled the shrinking war zone, signalling a military finish to Asia's longest modern war despite Western condemnation and calls for a negotiated end.

Sri Lanka has appealed for international help after Médecins Sans Frontières warned that civilian casualties are rising rapidly in the war zone despite the exodus of more than 100,000 people.

Sri Lanka's army began two-day cease-fire Monday, halting offenses against the cornered Tamil Tiger rebels and advising thousands of trapped civilians to use the pause to escape the war zone, the military said.

You don't often see a fugitive from justice ranting on primetime TV, so last week's pictures of Sudan's appalling president, Omar al-Bashir, were something to be savoured. Bashir had just heard that an international arrest warrant had been issued in his name, indicting him for war crimes and crimes against humanity in the eastern province of Darfur, and he didn't like it one bit.

Sri Lanka's military today said it killed dozens of Tamil Tiger separatists mounting a heavy counterattack and was moving ahead with plans to create safe routes for civilians to flee the war zone.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is proposing a high-level international conference on Afghanistan, possibly sponsored by the United Nations.

Sri Lankan troops were advancing inside the last town still held by Tamil Tiger separatists last night.

The news that the Sri Lankan government has rejected Gordon Brown's appointment of the former defence secretary Des Browne as special envoy comes as little surprise to anyone who has been following the situation there. The Sri Lankan government has become increasingly paranoid and defensive about all matters relating to the vicious civil war being waged in the north of the island.