FREETOWN, Jul 25 (IPS) - Nineteen suspects, including eight men from Colombia and Venezuela, have appeared before a Freetown High Court on charges of smuggling illegal drugs into the country.

WASHINGTON, Jul 24 (IPS) - U.S. regulators are pressing charges against a global trading firm they accuse of manipulating the oil market, in a move that dovetails with heightened political agitation over rising energy and food prices.

NEW DELHI, Jul 24 (IPS) - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has won a bitterly contested motion of confidence in his government by 275 to 256 votes in Parliament, securing his government's survival for several months.

BUCHAREST, Jul 23 (IPS) - After putting up a reformist face in order to join the European Union (EU) in 2007, Romanian and Bulgarian politicians have quickly returned to fostering corruption. And there is little the EU can do about it.

MEXICO CITY, Jul 20 (Tierramérica) - Mexico is drafting measures to regulate the sales of pharmaceuticals over the Internet: reforms have been announced for laws dating back to the 1980s, when the world wide web did not yet exist, and new monitoring systems are in the works to track the who, how and what of online sales.

NEW DELHI, Jul 19 (IPS) - As the parliamentary floor test for the controversial United States-India nuclear cooperation deal approaches, the domestic political odds seem to be turning against India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

NEW YORK, Jul 18 (IPS) - It sounded like the plot of an action thriller. A U.S. Senate subcommittee held hearings Thursday on how UBS/Switzerland, the world's largest private bank, and LGT (Liechtenstein Global Trust), owned by the royal family of that micro-tax-haven state, organised complex tax evasion schemes for U.S. clients, and used spy-type tactics to avoid being detected.

LIMA, Jul 17 (IPS) - The Peruvian justice system is to prosecute members of the governing American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA, or Aprista Party) for creating the Rodrigo Franco Commandos (CRF), a paramilitary unit alleged to have murdered five people during the first administration of current President Alan García (1985- 1990).

GEORGETOWN, Jul 16 (IPS) - The U.S. government has again snubbed Guyanese authorities, with whom it has long had a strained relationship, this time over a request for expert help in solving the latest of three mass murders this year.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 15 (IPS) - Malaysia’s beleaguered Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who has been under mounting pressure to resign after his 14-party National Front coalition fared its worst in the Mar. 8 polls, has stunned the nation by saying he will stay on till mid-2010.

MEXICO CITY, Jul 10 (IPS) - Seventeen days after a police raid on a discothèque here that left nine young people and three police officers dead, Mexico City’s leftwing mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, announced sweeping changes in the discredited police force -- including the dismissal of his chief of police.

RATANAKIRI, Cambodia, Jul 10 (IPS) - In thick forest in the north-east Cambodian province of Ratanakiri, a team of lawyers uses a global positioning satellite handset to mark the location of traditional spirit forests and gravesites belonging to local Jarai villagers.

KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 9 (IPS) - That opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim can draw the crowds in spite of fresh allegations of sodomy levelled against him was proved at last week’s massive anti-fuel hike rally. But cracks are showing up in the hurriedly formed three-party opposition People’s Alliance coalition.

TOYAKO, Japan, Jul 8 (IPS) - Three key documents – on African development, food security, and corruption -- emerging Tuesday from the summit of major industrial nations' leaders seem to have taken non-governmental organisations (NGOs) by surprise in delivering more than expected, even if they did not please all.

NAIROBI, Jul 8 (IPS) - Two days after publicly vowing to die rather than resign, Kenya's powerful finance minister, Amos Kimunya, announced he was resigning to allow an independent investigation of corruption charges against him.