Retirement may be bad for you, a recent report suggests, but throwing yourself into meaningful pro-bono work offers a path to fulfilment and continuing vitality.

The UK Institute of Economic Affairs finds retirement increases the likelihood of suffering from clinical depression by 40 percent and the chance of...

Our sympathy should be with the millions of graduates forced to endure commencement addresses at this time of year. They must wish they had a set of noise-eliminating ear phones for each time someone over 50 tells them it's now up to them to clear up the mess left by...

Heart-warming news from Sudan: the spirit of international brotherhood lives on. The Khartoum regime has found a fitting way to thank its great friend, Russia, for years of solidarity at the UN. Sudan has signed a deal with nine Russian mining companies with the promise of...

If we wish to take the high moral ground in world affairs, we must be consistent. Failure to practice what we preach reveals our hypocrisy and inflames our critics.

This week the outgoing U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said America has "a responsibility to go after al Qaeda wherever they...

Abu Qatada is a big man with an even bigger voice. The British legal system and sundry international institutions are keen to protect his human rights. This concern for his welfare owes more to his fame and his potential to cause embarrassment than to the facts of his legal case....

Arab governments are competing to find the strongest terms with which to condemn Israel's alleged bombing of a Sudanese weapons factory this week. Yet, no one in the Middle East should have been surprised. So long as the Khartoum regime works hand-in-hand with Iran in supporting groups like...

It comes as no surprise that the Obama administration has been hosting secret talks on the threat posed by al Qaeda in the Maghreb. Officials from the CIA, Pentagon and State Department have been considering what direct or indirect intervention might be needed to contain or neutralize Islamic...

More than sixty genocide scholars are calling on the Obama Administration to airlift aid to thousands of Sudanese facing starvation in the embattled Nuba Mountains. The experts believe the Sudanese regime is deliberately targeting the minority Nuba people, and they warn that as many as 300,000 internal refugees...

As South Sudan marks its first year as an independent country, there is a mood of despair among commentators. The fledgling nation is already being subsumed by war, extreme poverty, ethnic conflict and corruption, wail its detractors.

What did they expect?

Consider the dire circumstances its new government inherited....

There is good news for lovers of Art Nouveau, one of Europe's oddest cultural phenomena. Walk down Andrassy Street in Budapest, and you will find elaborate and bizarre examples of this strangest of architectural adventures, now restored to their former extravagant glory.

Thirty years ago, when I first visited...

President Obama has just created something called the Atrocities Prevention Board. Its aim is ambitious to say the least, but it matters because it recognizes that crimes against humanity rarely come out of the blue. The warning signs were there in the case of Armenia, the Holocaust, Bosnia, Rwanda, and...

In bars around the globe, in war zones, in refugee camps, after natural disasters, over drinks at conferences, people are comparing hair-raising travel stories. The scariest flight, the most disgusting hotel, the most horrific meal they were obliged to eat in order to avoid an international incident.

The challenges...

Despite what the UN says, the terror continues in Darfur

The UN Security Council is reconsidering the deployment of its joint African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, known as UNAMID. UN officials say there is now "much less organised violence" in the remote western province of Sudan. Hence they want...

The African warlord Joseph Kony is finally getting the attention he deserves, following the popularity of the viral video "Kony 2012." This is long overdue for the brave Ugandans, the human rights groups and charities who have tried for years to bring Kony's atrocities to the world's attention.

Kony's victims,...

So far the biggest loser in the Republican primary campaign has been the English language. One example is the hyperbolic use of the term 'class war.' When someone dares to question the distribution of power, opportunity and wealth in the United States, they are labelled a dangerous class warrior, beneath...

Last week presidential hopeful Rick Santorum warned that President Obama and "other liberals" are leading people of faith down a path that ends at the guillotine. Santorum is right that Christians are facing imminent death. Right now, millions of Christians in Nigeria and Sudan are being bombed, starved,...

Casablanca, a film regularly cited as one of the greatest movies of all time, was released 70 years ago. It gave us phrases that have passed into the English language, ("Here's looking at you, kid," "Round up the usual suspects", "We'll always have Paris," and "I think this is the...

The Arab League is whitewashing mass murder in Syria. But for the man leading its team of observers, what is happening on the streets of Syria is merely business as usual.

Mohammed Ahmed Dabi, a Sudanese general, has declared that the Syrian government is making significant progress toward the Arab...

When Allied troops liberated the Nazi death camps General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander in Europe, insisted that everything they found was recorded on film. He predicted that unless the heaps of wasted bodies and the gas ovens were documented, "some bastard" would deny it happened.

The...

I've been sent a photo of a man missing two-thirds of his head. He lies on rocky ground in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. The picture was taken by a fellow Nuban on his cell phone, moments after a Sudanese armed forces bombing raid killed his friend.

Although the...