World

Divisions among Islamic sects and poverty characterise a forgotten Arabian State. By Mairead Ryan

With the EU's boundaries expanding ever eastwards, most recently with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria, thoughts are now turning toward the new frontier. Ukraine's economy has already benefited greatly just from its neighbours' membership of the trading group, and the electoral pledge of pro-West President Victor Yushchenko to pursue EU accession garnered him much support from Ukraine's electorate.

Indonesia's anti-graft court today sentenced the former minister of maritime and fishery affairs  to seven years in prison for his role in a graft case.

An article in American magazine The Nation about the treatment of Iraqi civilians is stirring controversy as US troops step up offensive operations against insurgents around Baghdad.

Reading a new apocalyptic book by the former Irish Times neoconservative columnist, Mark Steyn, would be a smart career move for staff at the White House, it appears. President Bush has urged his staff to read Steyn's analysis of the “war on terror”.

The World Bank has released the results of a 10-year report on worldwide governance. It shows that while a number of countries are making progress in improving governance and fighting corruption, on average "the quality of governance around the world has not improved much around the world over the past decade".

Violent outbreaks over the building of churches in Egypt are symptomatic of a growing sectarian divide, writes Jonathan Spollen.

Looming behind the humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur is Sudan's other, older, bigger war – the 1983-2005 north-south conflict that claimed over two million lives and displaced over four million people. The conflict was resolved, on paper at least, by the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA); that agreement is now in jeopardy.

The unfailingly controversial ex-president of Peru Alberto Fujimori has once again inflamed passions in a country where he is accused of human rights abuses and corruption. By Tom Rowe