AP - President Barack Obama will meet leaders of Southeast Asian nations, including Myanmar, next month in a high-level affirmation of Washington's new policy of engaging the military-ruled country despite its dismal human rights record.

AFP - The African Union has implemented sanctions on Guinea's military rulers, AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said Saturday.

It's pleasing to see, in the storm of commentary over Professor David Nutt's sacking as the government's chief drugs adviser, that everyone outside politics now recognises the importance of scientific evidence in devising laws. But a strange reasoning twitch has appeared, in the arguments of politicians and rightwing commentators. Science can tell us about the molecules, they say, about their effect on the body and the risks. But policy is separate: a matter for judgment calls on social and ethical ... more

For the sake of our cultural life, politicians like Bradshaw and Johnson should leave political drama to the artsArt and politics have always been, and always will be, locked in a complicated and often uncomfortable dance, from Velázquez's double-edged depiction of Pope Innocent X to Mark Wallinger's Turner prize-winning State Britain – a meticulous recreation of Brian Haw's Parliament Square peace camp.But politics and art have now become entangled in a manner at best unedifying, at worst damaging, to cultural ... more

AFP - China said on Friday that this month's visit by President Barack Obama would be a milestone in relations for the global powerhouses and that climate change cooperation would be a key agenda item.