Imposing a cap on immigration is not the way to reduce the number of migrants: it is neither sensible nor necessary

Following David Cameron's promise of a crackdown on benefit "fraud", a revolting campaign has been launched in the Sun against "scroungers" and "cheats". Isn't it time for a parallel campaign against corporate fraudsters?

The failed assault on a Japanese oil supertanker is, alongside developments in Iraq and Yemen, a signal of the al-Qaida movement’s protean challenge.

Grenade attack rocks Kigali just two days after Kagame re-elected as president, while opposition groups urge international community to reject result. The Lord’s Resistance Army is violently abducting recruits in central Africa, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch. A top Iraqi general insists Iraq not ready for troop withdrawal, but comments brushed off by US and Iraqi officials. Car bomb rocks Bogota in first security test for Santos. All this and more in today’s briefing...

Central government has a critical and active role to play if Prime Minister David Cameron's "Big Society" idea is to be successful in the UK.

Lack of personnel and organizational incompetence have seriously hampered the Russian response to forest fires, writes Greenpeace's Alexei Yaroshenko. Worryingly, fires have reached some Chernobyl-affected regions, and many other villages have been essentially abandoned to their fate.

The two years since the war of August 2008 have been tough for Georgia. But in domestic politics and foreign relations alike the country has achieved more than once seemed possible, says Alexander Rondeli.

We lead this week's report with collection of voices calling for an end to the War on Drugs as a means of mitigating the violence that has engulfed places like Chicago and Mexico.

For nearly 30 years, the Campaign Against Planting has waged a quixotic battle to eradicate California's outdoor marijuana industry. It's at it again this year.

A New Yorker editor blogs an American discussion of voting systems from 12th century Venice to tomorrow, which way will Britain face when it comes to choose?

Last month amendments were passed to the law codifying the FSB’s surveillance of those citizens deemed to be threats to national security. Nicolai Petro, unlike some Western commentators, sees these as potentially making Russia's domestic security procedures among the world's most transparent.

An inquiry into Israel's raid on the Mamara is unlikely to heal the fractures of the Turkish-Israeli relationship. A definitive break in relations would alter the strategic balance of the middle east, leaving the possibility of peace even more forlorn, argues Avni Dogru.

Could a cosmopolitan citizenship in the Middle East ever include Israel? The fundamental meaning of Jewish cosmopolitanism for both its proponents and its antagonists was actually a sign of Jewish civilization long before the state of Israel was created

The British prime minister’s charge that Pakistan plays a prominent role in exporting terrorism is grounded in an assessment of the Afghanistan war's core strategic realities, says Shaun Gregory of the Pakistan Security Research Unit.

Tony Curzon Price's reading of Toy Story 3 fails to adequately explain why grown men cry in this film. There is nothing edifying to it.

Georgia’s Minister for Reunification Temur Yakobashvili outlines his government’s plan to retrieve the territories lost two years ago, in its war with Russia

A guided tour of Pakistan’s Army, from its role within Pakistani nationalism, prospects of mutiny, and the relationship of the ISI to the Jihadi world, to hostilities with India, suggests that some key ways of defusing the situation may be being neglected

As a salute to the historian and courageous social thinker, we publish an excerpt from Tony Judt's timely and passionate polemic on the need for a new political rhetoric which belongs to the people

Netanyahu says Israel acted legally during flotilla raid. North Korea fires artillery shells into waters near South Korean border. Abu Bakar Ba’asyir arrested in Indonesia. Venezuelan and Columbian presidents to meet for talks to restore diplomatic ties. All this and more in today's security briefing.

A Turkish Jew, born in Ankara in 1935, for whom Israel became ‘my spiritual country’, discovers that those who love Israel may have their ethical selves propelled into a state of coma by successive Israeli governments, despite the lessons of history