The bitter conflict over South Ossetia in August 2008 has turned to post-war stalemate. But just as the war and the current impasse involve more than Georgia and Russia, says Rein Müllerson, so progress in the region and beyond requires bold diplomatic thinking on all sides.

The opposition of Kenya's Christian churches to constitutional reforms is in part rooted in a new and disturbing hostility to Islam. This attitude marks a significant retreat from the churches’ past role in Kenya’s democratisation, says Daniel Branch.

Paul Kingsnorth’s journey from a degraded environmentalism to nature-centred ways of living and thinking has many echoes for Andrew Dobson, but also clarifies a difference of outlook.

The appointment of a new head of the lead United Nations anti-drugs agency is a precious opportunity to abandon a failed policy, says Juan Gabriel Tokatlian.

Ciudad Juarez is one of the world’s fastest growing cities. It is also one of the most violent.

Drug war violence in Mexico is truly horrific. But does it qualify as terrorism?

"Environmentalism, which in its raw, early form had no time for the encrusted, seized-up politics of left and right, has been sucked into the yawning, bottomless chasm of the 'progressive' left." A personal, twenty-year journey through the world’s wild places and the movements to protect them is also, for Paul Kingsnorth, an education in the limits of a project that has forgotten nature and lost its soul.

The transition to a new Chinese leadership has already begun. The domestic and international demands made of it will be greater than ever. But the character of the emerging generation will severely constrain its ability to cope, say Kerry Brown & Loh Su-hsing.

Daniel Metcalfe's book ‘Out of Steppe’ describes his journey through Central Asia. In this excerpt he describes the Karakalpak landscape around the Aral Sea. The Soviet tourist destination, previously the centre of a successful fishing industry, is now depopulated, polluted by the chemicals used to prop up the failing cotton industry and by a landscape of devastation and desperation.

South African cabinet meet to discuss the possibility of sending peacekeeping troops to Somalia. North Korea expresses further anger as Seoul and Washington carry out further military drills. Secular Palestinian groups join Hamas, saying that a return to direct talks with Israel would be ‘dangerous’. US Defence Secretary gives concrete dates for the beginning of US withdrawal from Afghanistan. All this and more in today's security briefing.

America's internecine counter-insurgency debate is now making some progress, though not on a single predefined path.

Alongside the coming referendum on AV Britain has been promised an elected second chamber, reformers are warned to keep their eye on both.

Continuing the OK Referendum Plus debate, the case for the AV referendum as a step towards replacing the 'sovereignty of parliament'

The death of Jimmy Reid marks the loss of one of the last Men of Iron. But as the tributes pour in, it feels as if people are using their laments to navigate and self-justify the changes of their real leaders, Thatcher and Blair.

The small Black Sea republic of Abkhazia, already free of Georgia’s control since the war of 1992-93, emerged more secure from the Georgia-Russia war of August 2008. But if the “dreadful” years of its modern history have ended, the young state is now living through “difficult” times. George Hewitt, in Sukhum, reports and reflects.

Excessive national debt in low-income countries, sometimes incurred by dubious means and parties, is a major hindrance to development and a burden to creditor country citizens. An international mechanism is needed to offer countries a way to negotiate balanced resolutions with their creditors.

The direct involvement of African Christians in battles over social policy in the USA is mirrored by the involvement of the American Christian Right in Africa, as they collaborate to oppose progressive forces in civil society and shape government policy

Trust in government is often thought to be in terminal crisis, but the truth is somewhat more complicated, argues Charles Barclay Roger.

The Adam Smith Institute and the wider right could never palate the success of any publicly funded institution, so their latest reports' prescriptions for the BBC come as no surprise, argues Steven Barnett.

A pattern of human rights violations and other irregularities suggests that this long battle in Turkish courts against those accused of involvement in plans for public chaos and a military coup is not solely committed to strengthening Turkey’s democracy