New Zealand has confirmed that the black, white and blue silver fern design won a referendum to become a possible new flag, after the final votes were counted […] The decision to choose a new flag has been backed by [Prime Minister John Key], who has said the current one is too similar to Australia's and that it is time to remove the Union Jack from the current flag.

In most other countries, you might be forgiven for wondering what possible link there might be between an archaeological discovery and the national economy […] In Egypt, however, archaeology and tourism are intimately connected [...] the economy is maintained by the pharaoh's gold standard. Egypt has two great tourism assets: its hundreds of miles of Red Sea beaches and the great monuments from its long history.

China’s top negotiator at the UN summit on climate change practically gushed as he described his country’s relationship with California […] And with a slew of agreements with foreign leaders, Gov. Brown has turned California’s Air Resources Board and Environmental Protection Agency into de facto diplomatic organizations […] “California basically has a foreign policy,” said David Victor, a UC San Diego professor.

 Alizadeh secretly recorded a video for her rap song, “Brides for Sale.” “I scream for a body exhausted in its cage,” she sings in Farsi, “a body that broke under the price tags you put on it.” After posting the video on YouTube in October 2014 [...] she was offered a scholarship to a high school in central Utah. The ordeal is the subject of Sonita, a documentary that was selected to be screened at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam this November.

In a bitter irony, Prince Harry was pictured coming face to face with the bloody work of illegal poachers in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, just hours before the palace released a selection of his own personal photographs and videos that were taken during his summer visit to Africa, where he worked on frontline conservation projects.

Nahdlatul Ulama, or NU, is the largest independent Islamic organization in the world, with 50 million members...NU's stated goal is to "to spread messages about a tolerant Islam in their respective countries to curb radicalism, extremism and terrorism," which, it claims, "often spring from a misinterpretation of Islamic teachings." It launched its global anti-extremism initiative in 2014. 

For the first time in the 19-year history of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), civil society observers of the talks were walking out. So what? Because the so-called observers have become an integral part of the open U.N. negotiations, and the thousands of activists who attend the yearly climate conference serve as the unofficial conscience of the entire process.

The United Nations is marking this year’s International Day of Persons with Disabilities today with the theme “inclusion matters” to raise awareness and mobilize support for some one billion people living with disabilities who remain one of the most marginalized groups in the world.