John Zarocostas

Political interference, intimidation and the arbitrary dismissal of judges and prosecutors over the past 15 years has undermined Venezuela’s justice system and fostered a climate of impunity, criminality and violence in the deeply divided nation, the International Commission of Jurists concluded in a report released Thursday.

The World Trade Organization ruled Friday that China had violated trade rules when it slapped punitive duties as high as 21 percent on America-made cars and sport utility vehicles.

There has been an “alarming deterioration” in the human rights situation in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russia armed groups have engaged in killings, torture and forced disappearances, the United Nations said Friday.

The United States is the only Western country _ and one of only three in the world _ that does not provide some kind of monetary payment to new mothers who’ve taken maternity leave from their jobs, a new U.N. study reports.

The United Nation’s top humanitarian field operations official said Friday that more than 9 million Syrians have been displaced by the country’s civil war _ 6.5 million of whom are still inside Syria, while 2.7 million have fled to nearby countries.

The Vatican’s representative to a United Nations panel probing the Roman Catholic Church’s handling of child sexual abuse on Tuesday equated abortion to torture and said the U.N. panel’s focus on the church’s teachings on the subject was inappropriate.

The United Nations special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, is likely to step down this month and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has begun the search for a successor, according to senior Western, Middle Eastern and U.N. diplomatic officials.

The United Nations has recorded 37,000 incidents of heavy weapons use in the three-year Syrian civil war, a staggering frequency that the top U.N. official for disarming mines and discarded munitions warns will plague civilians and humanitarian aid groups for years after the fighting there ends.

Businesses across Syria have been devastated by the destruction inflicted by the traumatic three-year civil war, and the economy could take 30 years to recover to its pre-conflict level , a United Nations survey published Wednesday warns.

The U.N. Human Rights Council agreed Friday, over the strong objections of the United States, to study whether American drone strikes comply with international law.

The World Trade Organization on Wednesday sided with the United States against China in a trade dispute that could affect the price of nearly every modern electronic product manufactured today.

The convoy began moving across the border last Friday and carried enough supplies -- food, blankets, mattresses, hygiene kits, medicines and medical supplies for 268,000 people. It was organized by an alphabet soup of U.N. agencies: the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the World Food Program (WFP), the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The World Health Organization is calling on the international community to step up its efforts to diagnose and treat tuberculosis, noting that one-third of the 9 million people who fall ill with TB each year receive no treatment.

The United States retained its lead as the world’s most inventive country in 2013, accounting for 27.9 percent of all international patent applications, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization, which tracks patent applications in 148 nations.