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Nigeria is Africa's most populous and prosperous country. It has 170 million people, the largest economy on the African continent, and endless potential for the future - if the past doesn't get in the way. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sparring between the Russian and U.S. teams already has started weeks before the Feb. 7 Opening Ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia. Political gamesmanship has taken the field at an international event dedicated to honoring human rights and human achievement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sunday's Chronicle, reporter Stephanie M. Lee delivered a down-the-middle story about a Bay Area couple, Jennifer Benito-Kowalski and Steve Kowalski, 40 and 41, who paid an Indian woman to help them attain their goal of making a baby with their own DNA. To many moderns, this arrangement presents a win-win formula. The impoverished gestational carrier gets needed money, and the comfortable couple gets a baby. What's not to like? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Two decades ago, the war against AIDS appeared unwinnable. Tattered health systems, deep prejudice and disorganized planning gave little hope the rampaging virus that attacks the immune system could ever be curbed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The political situation in Egypt is fast moving, chaotic and intense. Following several days of protest and unrest, military leaders removed Egypt's elected president, Mohammed Morsi, on Wednesday. The military also suspended Egypt's Constitution - which had only been in effect since December - and called for new elections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Gov. Jerry Brown knew when he left for China that he had something the Chinese wanted and needed - know-how to clear the air. Beijing's pollution-darkened skies are legendary. The dirty air closes airports, harms lungs and threatens China's burgeoning economy. Who would know better than Californians how to reduce smog? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Finally, a nation that is contributing heavily to climate change is taking a major step to reduce its emissions. Unfortunately, this global leadership is not coming from the United States. It's coming from China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For 15 years Huge Chavez built Venezuela around his outspoken views and outsized personality. When his death was finally announced Tuesday, it came after months of secrecy and denials that his health was fading. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama is accelerating one of his biggest and riskiest foreign pledges: a withdrawal from Afghanistan that will hand the fighting to Afghan troops by spring instead of summer with nearly all U.S. forces gone by the end of this year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Russian President Vladimir Putin just signed a cruel and spiteful law that will bar Americans from adopting Russian children. The new law will wreck the lives of the 46 children whose American adoptions were already under way, hundreds of other American families who had launched the adoption process, and the lives of countless children to come who will now live out their childhoods in Russian orphanages. Americans - including many Bay Area residents - adopt nearly a thousand Russian children every year. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

San Francisco hosts a somber occasion Tuesday: a memorial service for slain Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who was raised in Bay Area and will be honored at City Hall. His death is a reminder of the perilous duties and high purpose that go with American diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) scandal, which originated with the news last month that a few traders within the British banking giant Barclays were trying to manipulate a global benchmark for interest rates, is ballooning at a frightening rate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mexican voters took a huge leap of faith Sunday. By electing Enrique Peña Nieto president, they were willing to give the Institutional Revolutionary Party - the same autocratic party that ruled Mexico with an iron fist for seven long decades - a second chance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's a good thing that the people of Egypt have chosen a new president, Mohammed Morsi, in their first-ever free and fair democratic election. It would be a better thing if Morsi had the power to govern the country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Well, that was close. In a squeaker election Sunday, the pro-bailout New Democracy party in Greece won just under 30 percent of the vote, giving it the mandate to build a governing coalition that supports keeping Greece in the euro zone. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

For the past year I've been fortunate enough to have a front-row seat at the Greek tragedy that is the euro crisis: I was a fellow at the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung in Berlin, which is the think tank for the Christian Democratic Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's political party. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Syria has become a lesson in how to achieve nothing. After 15 months of fighting and 10,000 dead, there's a familiar pattern: angry demands that dictator Bashar Assad go, new diplomatic sanctions and a brief pause in the killings to bury the dead. Then the cycle repeats. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The world knows the basic biography of Chen Guangcheng, a blind dissident who slipped away from government thugs, holed up in the American Embassy in Beijing, and after negotiations won a get-out-of-jail card to study in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The timing of China dissident Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest was almost as remarkable as the logistics of slipping past security to journey from his village to the protection of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One of the overriding takeaways from my November 2010 trip to Liberia was the magnitude of the devastation it had yet to fully confront from 14 years of civil war. An estimated 200,000 Liberians were killed, and many times more were terrorized and displaced - yet most of the lead perpetrators remained unpunished. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Retail giant Walmart has fallen from the high ground with revelations that it may have violated U.S. and Mexican laws in its zeal to expand its empire south of the border. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When 28-year old Kim Jong Un took over North Korea after his father's death, there was hope that he would take his isolated, dirt-poor country in a new direction. How ridiculous that notion looks now as his military prepares to launch a 100-foot missile and reportedly readies an underground nuclear test. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An inspiring surge of democracy in military-run Burma deserves support, encouragement and one more thing: caution. The election was a sweeping win for the long-suppressed Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters, but the results are only a start toward wider freedoms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A little known San Diego nonprofit zoomed to international fame earlier this month when its Kony 2012 video became the most viral in history. Political communicators of every stripe were stunned by its meteoric rise in the global media - and salivating over the idea that their candidate, their message, might enjoy a similar ride into voters' hearts and minds. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It was ugly and heavy-handed, but he got the job done. Russia's Vladimir Putin won a six-year term as president and an opportunity to mollify angry demonstrators and convince world leaders he can act beyond Moscow's narrow interests. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What we said: An attack on freedom of the press anywhere is an attack on freedom everywhere. Such an assault is under way in Ecuador ... The target: El Universo, a 90-year-old Guayaquil newspaper ... a leading voice for freedom and democracy in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Egypt's generals are playing a dangerous game. Facing angry protests and a sinking economy since the ouster of autocratic Hosni Mubarak a year ago, the army rulers have found scapegoats. The country's woes, it seems, are the fault of some 43 pro-democracy workers, including 19 Americans. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An attack on freedom of the press anywhere is an attack on freedom everywhere. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has raised some very legitimate questions that go to the heart of Pakistan's commitment to stopping terrorism. In unusually blunt language, Panetta challenged Pakistan's plans to try Dr. Shakeel Afridi - the doctor who helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden - on charges of treason. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Taiwan's voters settled at least one issue. By a small margin, the country re-elected a president who favors expanding ties with its big-brother neighbor, China. It was no landslide but the results were a relief to both Beijing and Washington, which favor the business-like status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Dear Leader is gone, replaced by the Great Successor. That's as much as anyone outside of North Korea's inner circle knows about the leadership mix following the death of dictator Kim Jong Il and the elevation of his son. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In AMC's zombie series "The Walking Dead," tensions build between an old-fashioned veterinarian farmer named Hershel Greene - who thinks zombies have a disease that may be cured someday - and a caravan of gun-packing refugees led by Deputy Rick Grimes. Because Hershel wants to protect the zombies he has hidden in his barn, he orders Rick and company to leave his property - even though leaving could make Rick, his family and friends easy pickings for the undead. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Pakistan Prime Minister Yosuf Raza Gilani declared Monday that there would be "no more business as usual" following the NATO air strikes that killed 24 of his nation's soldiers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When Hosni Mubarak was deposed as Egypt's despotic leader, it was a high-water moment for Arab democracy. But some things didn't change - the country's all-powerful military remained in charge and Washington remained reluctant to push for a genuine house-cleaning. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Paint formulas, engine designs and insecticide research don't sound like prime targets for cyber-spies working at the behest of Russia or China. But these examples underline Washington's worry at aggressive Internet spying that is siphoning off U.S. economic and business trade secrets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A modest-sized United Nations agency that preserves historic places around the globe and fights poverty doesn't belong in the middle of Mideast peace talks. But unfortunately that's where Palestinian leaders have dragged UNESCO, the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It's just one truck, but it represents the end of a 16-year-old feud between neighbors and a new beginning for our North American partnership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Mideast peace talks - if such a process even has a pulse - are fading fast. The push for Palestinian statehood at the United Nations last week was provocative enough. Now comes a move from the Israeli side: a plan to build 1,100 housing units for Jewish settlers in a contested part of East Jerusalem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After on-and-off drama, Iran has released a pair of young American hikers facing eight year prison stretches on unfounded charges of espionage. Their true plight was to fall into Tehran's hands as hostages in a diplomatic tug-of-war with Washington. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When the Scots released convicted Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdel Basset Ali al Megrahi on Aug. 20, 2009 - ostensibly because prostate cancer left him less than three months to live - Megrahi presented a stooped, frail figure as he boarded his getaway plane. Hours later when he landed to a hero's welcome in Tripoli, however, Megrahi appeared triumphant and radiant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

If Moammar Khadafy has finally left power, what comes next? His downfall is something to celebrate after a promising uprising turned into a slog to dislodge him. But it also brings up the follow-up question that has dogged the Arab spring: Who's in charge now? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An unhinged zealot, binging on extremist thought, slaughters scores of innocent victims. Sadly, it's happened before in Oklahoma City 15 years ago and in dozens of suicide bombing attacks across the world. Now come the killings in Norway. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2007, Norwegian Justice Minister Knut Storberget proposed extending Norway's absolute maximum criminal sentence of 21 years to 30 years for genocide, crimes against humanity and terrorism. That proposal didn't go anywhere. The maximum criminal sentence in Norway is 21 years. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three years ago this month, then-Sen. Barack Obama told an enthusiastic throng in Berlin, "In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Amid tear gas from street protests and shouting parliamentary debate, Greece finally took a decisive step. It will cut pensions, sell off power plants and phone companies, and raise taxes to meet the demands of European banks and institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Nothing better illustrates Americans' dysfunctional relationship with guns than the political battles over U.S. military-style assault weapons ending up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Here's one symbol of the world's volatility: Oil prices have been falling in recent days. The reason is not because investors have stopped worrying about political unrest in the Middle East. On the contrary - they're simply far more worried that the European debt crisis will depress demand and, possibly, the world economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

President Obama provided a clear, compelling rationale for his decision to use U.S. military force to prevent mass slaughter in Libya. He was more vague, and much less likely to reduce Americans' anxiety, in describing the next steps. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An autocrat in the Arab world faces street riots and promises reforms. But the protests continue, tanks roll across downtown squares and the bodies pile up on YouTube clips. It's a scene that keeps repeating itself. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The punishing air strikes that stopped Libyan dictator Moammar Khadafy from killing his own people were the right move. But now comes the tougher challenge of finding an endgame that removes him from power and avoids a looming stalemate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]