News that India's Finance Minister has described the amount of money given by the UK to his country as "peanuts" comes at a tricky time for Anglo-Indian relations.

More than 3,000 civilians were killed in the war in Afghanistan in 2011, the fifth year in a row the number has risen, according to the United Nations in a report likely to revive tension between the Afghan government and its Western backers.

By the time she was 22, Shukofar had suffered nine miscarriages. She carried the babies until about six months, before losing them all. Poor, uneducated and lacking access to proper medical care, she turned to the fix-all panacea in rural Afghanistan: opium. Smoking the drug, she was told, would keep her calm, stop any bleeding and allow her to carry to full term.

Western and Arab governments and opposition activists yesterday scrambled to forge a new plan to stem the bloodshed in Syria after Russia and China's veto of a UN resolution sparked outrage and warnings that the move could tip the country into civil war.

Three more people have set themselves on fire to protest about China's policies toward Tibetans in a politically sensitive area that already has seen ethnic violence this year.

Saudi women leading a campaign against the kingdom's ban on female driving are calling on the courts to take up their lawsuits demanding the right to drive.

Amid the horrors surrounding female genital mutilation (FGM) there is a quiet revolution, which experts hope could lead to the eradication of the practice.

Talks between leaders of Greece's colaition government will resume today after they reached a partial agreement on the austerity measures needed to secure a ?130bn (£108bn) bailout to stave off bankruptcy.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's chances of re-election this spring will boom if the far right candidate, Marine Le Pen, is locked out of the race, according to a poll published yesterday.

He looked less like a contender for the US presidency, and more like Comical Ali, the Iraqi PR minister famed for declarations of impending victory in the jaws of catastrophic defeat.