THE HAGUE, Netherlands  — A defiant Ratko Mladic plunged his Yugoslav war crimes tribunal arraignment into chaos Monday, repeatedly shouting at judges, defying their orders and refusing to enter pleas to 11 charges before the presiding judge threw him out of the hearing.

On June 12, 1991, millions voted to make Boris Yeltsin Russia's first president, marking a break-up of the USSR. Today, as Russia is celebrating its national day, the heavy time of reforms Yeltsin cast on the new country still divides public opinion.

On May 9th the European Union marks the symbolic date when Robert Schuman put forward his ideas on a united Europe to bring lasting peace and prosperity to our continent. The core of Schuman's vision was to build Europe not by a single decision or a single design but step by step. By pooling sovereignty, and building solidarity through concrete common projects. And that is what has happened.

For the past few months we had the “honour” to read many articles and news reports in which the above countries have been described as mayor threats and terrorism/terrorist supported states without any sustainable evidence. It is not a secret that these states are facing much political and economical turbulence, but that does not necessarily means they are a threat to the world.

Hegemony is the dominance of one group over other groups, with or without the threat of force, to the extent that, for instance, the dominant party can dictate the terms of trade to its advantage; more broadly, cultural perspectives become skewed to favor the dominant group. The cultural control that hegemony asserts affects commonplace patterns of thought: hegemony controls the way new ideas are rejected or become naturalized in a process that subtly alters notions of common sense in a given society.

More specifically, today's EU funding will support six strategic programmes. Firstly, the Road Sector Budget Support Programme of € 70 million will support sustainable and cost-efficient transport links from farm and factory gate to market centres and across borders to international trading partners. Through the provision of all-weather rural feeder roads, the programme is expected to improve rural accessibility to agricultural production areas and markets, especially for isolated local communities.

Friends Provident has recommended a £1.86bn takeover from Clive Cowdery’s Resolution vehicle after the entrepreneur upped his bid for the insurur and made minor concessions on corporate governance.

The power struggle and economic deterioration that followed the death of President Houphouët-Boigny (in 1993) created increasing political turbulence. The government's promotion of "Ivorianness" (Ivorian ethnic stock) further destabilised the country, where 25% of the population is of immigrant origin, and left millions of people excluded from political and economic life. The military coup at the end of 1999 and the transition to presidential elections in 2000, which were won by Laurent Gbagbo, did nothing to stabilise the political situation..

Angola is located in South-West Africa bordering the Atlantic Ocean, having the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia as eastern neighbours and Namibia as southern's. The country population is approximately 17.4 million dispersed across a total area of 1,246,700 km², with a growth rate of around 3% which is fuelled by the highest fertility rate in the world (7 children per woman on average). A long and brutal civil war has devastated the country since immediately after independence from Portugal in 1975, until peace was finally reached in 2002.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a vast country (more than 2.3 million km²), rich in natural resources (minerals, forests, oil and fertile land) and has more than 60 million inhabitants divided between 200 ethnic groups. Yet, despite immense resources, poverty is widespread in the DRC and the social and economic situation of the country already fragile were gravely impacted by both the food prices and financial crisis.

The 3rd Africa-EU Summit takes place in Tripoli, Libya, on 29-30 November 2010. Heads of States and Governments will focus their discussions on key thematic issues of interest for both continents and agree on concrete deliverables and flagship initiatives for the future of their partnership.