Prime Minister Gordon Brown has met Afghan president Hamid Karzai at Downing Street amid fresh violence in Afghanistan.

Seven civilians and a US soldier die in a suicide car bomb attack on a US convoy in eastern Afghanistan, Afghan officials say.

Two Royal Marines have been killed in an explosion in southern Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence says.

KABUL Tuesday, November 11, 2008 (IRIN) - The Afghan government has said it will keep all main and secondary roads open this winter, and has earmarked about US$2.5 million for two ministries to clear snow and flood debris from over

The Taleban's top spokesman gives a rare interview, taking questions from BBC listeners and urging foreign troops to leave.

Up to 2,000 more British troops are likely to be sent to Afghanistan next year, the BBC learns.

NEW YORK Thursday, November 13, 2008 (IRIN) - Humanitarian organisations face tough choices if the global financial crisis affects their income, as some analysts predict. Although it is too soon to predict the full impact of the crisis on funding,

NEW YORK Tuesday, November 11, 2008 (IRIN) - Leaders of the top 20 industrial and big emerging-market countries will be asked to reaffirm their commitments to development assistance at the emergency summit on 15 November convened by President George W

POL-E-KHOMRI Thursday, November 13, 2008 (IRIN) - Masto Khan's two children died and another was seriously injured in an explosion at a returnees' settlement in Afghanistan in October. He and his family had come there, after living in exile in

DUBAI Monday, November 10, 2008 (IRIN) - John Holmes, UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, has been in Dubai attending the inaugural Summit on the Global Agenda held by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) in partnership

The strikes by taxi drivers in Chongqing seem to be contagious, as similar strikes have broken out this week in Yongdeng, Gansu and Sanya, Hainan Island, China Daily reports: In Sanya, local police detained 21 people who allegedly became violent

Time China blog looks at a bizarre twist in the case of Yang Jia, who became an Internet hero after being sentenced to death for killing six police officers in Shanghai: Liu Xiaoyuan, a Beijing lawyer who has been closely

Beijing's $586 billion economic stimulus package may or may not contribute to infrastructure modernization, represent a national policy of turning-inwards, and positively impact the global financial community. But with an anemic stock market, a depreciating real estate industry, and inflation

An analysis in Environment 360, a publication of Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, gives an optimistic picture of China's environmental record and efforts to go green: So China is not responsible for where we are today on climate

Professor Jiang Gaoming discusses how farmers in rural China could use straw to reduce China's carbon footprint in his China Dialogue article: China's population is mainly rural, and if that population realises its full potential for consumption, we will have

chinaSMACK translated a post giving a firsthand account of violence by Siyang City's urban management ( ) officials: On October 31st, at 4pm in the afternoon, a group of "city management" arrived at the scene, and began indiscriminately pulling all

With all the building going on in Beijing, the CCTV (China Central Television) station also has a new structure and a new nickname to go with it. Time's The China Blog reports: Names, especially nicknames, pet names and the like,

On China Media Project, David Bandurski writes about domestic media coverage of the recent taxi strike in Chongqing as an example of the new governmental approach to media control, which aims to "actively set the agenda": When the taxi strike

Following complaints filed to the WTO by the U.S., E.U. and Canada, China has canceled regulations imposed in 2006 that required foreign financial news services to go through Xinhua to distribute news in China. From AP: Calling it a "landmark

CDT reported previously that a Chinese delegation would appear before the U.N. Committee Against Torture to face questions about the country's alleged abuse of prisoners. Chinese officials appearing before the panel have been less than forthcoming with hard facts or