head of state

(Newser) - Barbados is shedding its colonial tradition and with it its head of state, Queen Elizabeth II. The government for the Caribbean island nation, which gained independence from Britain in 1966, said Wednesday that it would transition from a constitutional monarchy to a republic with a Barbadian head of state. The...

(Newser) - Nobody has won this year's $5 million Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, the committee responsible for picking a winner announced today. That’s an enormous snub to the people eligible for the award, who include former heads of state Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria,...

(Newser) - The UN Security Council today adopted a US-drafted resolution that outlines much of President Obama’s plan to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The president’s attendance at the meeting of heads of state—just the fifth in UN history—underscores the centrality of the issue for his administration....

(Newser) - After watching six presidents botch greetings with their global counterparts, Miss Manners has had it. “Where is the Office of Protocol, for goodness’ sake,” Judith Martin fumes in the Washington Post. Fifty years ago, “the American huggy movement” replaced the egalitarian handshake—a gesture that made Americans...