Bravely (or recklessly) writing these lines in Ottawa, I am running the risk of being ostracized by my Canadian hockey-loving colleagues and friends for as much as hinting any approval of the KHL—Russia-led Kontinental Hockey League (spelled with a K so as not to be confused with several existing CHL sports acronyms and to resemble its original Cyrillic spelling).

Contemporary cities, in particular, can offer a unique vantage point capable of producing critical knowledge not only about the urbanized condition of humanity but also about major social, economic, and cultural revolutions in our society. The politics of governance and accountability in these closed regimes are not free from this pervasiveness.

GSIS Model United Nations 2013 is underway at GSIS Main Campus, Islamabad, says a press release. The four-day event started on February 07, with the inauguration ceremony by the Secretary General, Hassan Abbas. GMUN Patron and GSIS Principal Qurat-ul-Ain Ali Rizvi while addressing the participants said: “The organisers have worked really hard for the GMUN. There are going to be great enthusiastic debating sessions, colourful activity of global village and social events.”

Even the most ardent supporters of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) concede that last year was a pretty disastrous one for the ten-country grouping. Replacing the region’s usual mild-mannered consensus was an unprecedented eruption of rowing and bickering, all on very public and humiliating display at its summit meetings.

They have, along with other of my colleagues, really embraced the whole idea of partnerships and understood that in the 21st century, diplomacy and development is not in any way confined to government-to-government relations. Those have to be tended, those have to be respected, those have to be nurtured and grown. But at the same time in this increasingly interconnected, networked world, we wanted to reach out people-to-people, to our NGOs, our faith communities, our private sector, and so much more.

P O’Malley interviews Kofi Annan
On Rwanda: ‘countries had become risk-averse after Somalia’
On Darfur: ‘the UN could not determine from their study, that it was genocide’
On Israel Palestine: ‘often the Americans tended to forget the problems on the Israeli side, and finger-pointed to the Palestinians and Arafat’

Israel is likely to become on Tuesday afternoon the first country to boycott a United Nations Human Rights Council periodic review that all 193 member states participate in. It is the council which Israel objects to, not the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights record, which it underwent in 2008.

United Nations special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi offered the grimmest picture yet of Syria’s descent into chaos, leaving little doubt that diplomatic paths have been exhausted as the conflict drags on indefinitely. Syria is unraveling before the eyes of the world, Brahimi told the UN Security Council yesterday, according to an account provided by two UN officials who asked to not be named because the meeting was closed to the public.