The head of the United States Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke has said the global economy is on the verge of recovery. He was addressing a bankers' conference in Wyoming, from where Greg Wood reports. Ben Bernanke said that the prospects for a return to...
REPORTER: In this edition of One Planet on the BBC World Service, I'll be looking at the role debt swaps can play in trying to help conserve some of the world's most valuable forests. CLAUDIA MCMURRAY: The effort was to take forgiven debt and put it...
The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered a review of security after 95 people were killed in a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad, the deadliest attack in the city for over a year. At least five bombs exploded near government buildings as...
Officials in Pakistan say the detained chief spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban has confirmed that their leader Baitullah Mehsud is dead. They said the spokesman, Maulvi Omar, acknowledged under interrogation that Mr. Mehsud was killed earlier this...
A Russian merchant ship that vanished nearly three weeks ago in mysterious circumstances has been found in the Atlantic. The vessel, the Arctic Sea, was sailing from Finland to Algeria with a cargo of timber. Its crew said that it was boarded by arme...
Senior figures in President Obamas government have indicated that his health care reforms may be diluted, a day after he robustly defended them at a public meeting. The government-run scheme to extend health insurance to the 45 million uninsured Amer...
The United States Senator Jim Webb who's been visiting Burma says he has secured the release of an American man jailed for entering the home of the detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. A statement from the Senator's office said they would...
Fighting in the Gaza Strip between forces of the Hamas movement and an Islamist radical group is reported to have left at least 13 people dead and up to 100 injured. Eyewitnesses in the town of Rafah say the two sides have engaged in a running gun ba...
One of the opposition presidential candidates in Iran, Mehdi Karroubi, has alleged that some of the people detained after the disputed election last month have been tortured to death in prison. Andrew Bolton has more The claim by Mehdi Karroubi, one...
The BBC has learned that a Libyan man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing is likely to be released from a Scottish prison next week on compassionate grounds. Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer. Steve Jackson reports. Abdelbase...
