POLITICS-US: Same-Sex Marriage Making a Comeback?

Still not fully embraced by the religious right, Sen. John McCain, the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee, has been handed an opportunity to prove his loyalty to the party's most influential and powerful grassroots force.

SPAIN: Fight Against Domestic Violence only Strong on Paper

While domestic violence in Spain is becoming more and more visible, the country’s laws and justice system are proving weak instruments to fight the phenomenon, according to experts from different fields who are demanding further legal reforms to address the issue.

POLITICS-US: Bush Comments Rally Dems Behind Obama

U.S. President George W. Bush's comments in Israel Thursday ignited a political campaign row back home as Democratic leaders decried his comparison of engaging enemies to Nazi appeasement.

PAKISTAN: Agitations Planned to Get Top Judiciary Reinstated

Pakistan's ruling coalition is coming unstuck over the issue of reinstating 60 members of the higher judiciary dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf in November, ahead of a court decision on the validity his re-election for a second term.

CHINA: Quake Helps Mend Image After Tibet Crackdown

A sense of solemnity has enveloped most activities in the Chinese capital these days. Even the avant-garde shows in town strike a note of bereavement for the 50,000 people estimated to have perished in the deadly earthquake this week.

HEALTH: World Bank Shifting Gears on AIDS in Africa

The World Bank says it is recalibrating its financing for anti-AIDS efforts in Africa, which shoulders more than two-thirds of the world's HIV/AIDS burden.

TRADE: Zimbabwe Is the Fly in the New FTA Broth

With an electoral crisis, world-record inflation and a collapsing economy blighted by a brain drain and a generally restive population, Zimbabwe could prove to be southern Africa’s ‘‘problem child’’ as the region seeks to link its economies in a new free trade area (FTA).

RIGHTS-INDIA: Top Activist’s Detention Blot on Democracy

Protests are mounting all over the world against the year-long detention of Dr. Binayak Sen, a distinguished Indian human rights and health activist, under draconian laws in the central state of Chhattisgarh.

TRADE-AFRICA: EU Seeks to Subdue Competitive China

With the ascendance of China as a robust force on Africa’s economic and political scene, plans are afoot in the European Union (EU) to pre-empt the Asian nation’s dominance on the continent by forming a trilateral partnership that places Europe squarely in the centre.

EUROPE: Call to Link Trade With Children’s Rights

The European Union has been urged to make its trading relationships with foreign countries conditional on reducing and eventually eradicating child labour.

PHILIPPINES: Deforestation – MNCs, Militants, Soldiers, Farmers Blamed

Outside the office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Compostela Valley province sits a pile of confiscated, milled hardwood - a monument to the deforestation caused mainly by parties to a festering armed conflict.

ECONOMY-US: Foreclosures Spike as Lenders’ Aid Efforts Founder

U.S. banks' property seizures more than doubled in April and home foreclosure filings climbed 65 percent from a year earlier, an indication that government-hyped efforts to protect homeowners are falling short.

SOUTHERN AFRICA: Water "Undervalued and Not Treated With Respect"

A two-day conference on water issues in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which opened Wednesday in Maseru, Lesotho, has seen representatives of government, civil society, the private sector, donors and other groups discuss the likely effects of climate change on development in the region.

THEATRE-US: The Year the War Came Home

On this 40th anniversary of 1968, the year that for the United States was the apogee of opposition to the war in Vietnam, two new Off Broadway plays explore divergent ways that U.S. citizens protested - and ponder the best way to contest a senseless war.

TRANSPORT: Major Hurdle for IBSA Initiative

As the foreign ministers of India, Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) met in Cape Town on Monday, to take forward a unique initiative in South-South economic cooperation, a gathering of hard-nosed corporate captains from the three countries discussed the absence of adequate transportation facilities among the ‘IBSA’ members.

RELIGION-US: Missionaries Look to Immigrant ‘Chinatowns’

As people rush in and out of butcher shops and bakeries on Brooklyn's Eighth Avenue, He Zhanglao tries to get their attention. He speaks in clear Mandarin, and listens carefully to their replies. But he's tall and blond, and sticks out in this part of Sunset Park, home to many Chinese immigrants.

US/IRAQ: Tangled Web of Allegiances Leads Back to Tehran

If politics makes strange bedfellows, then the relationship between Iran, the United States and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq is the strangest ménage à trois in international relations today.

POLITICS: Lebanon Crisis Shows Hues of Iraq

Almost every country in the world has had a civil war, but rarely has a nation survived a second one.

SOUTH ASIA: Differing on Right to Information

The right to information (RTI), as espoused by the United Nations and international human rights organisations, does not have full endorsement from South Asian media practitioners and scholars.

RIGHTS-KENYA: Home Is Where the Fear Is

The Kenyan government has begun transporting certain internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the camps they have occupied for the last four months back to their homes. The IDPs have been assured of support by government once back on their farms.

Q&A: Portugal’s ‘Mayor of the Future’ in Green Energy

He is mayor of one of Portugal’s smallest and poorest municipalities. But his perseverance in using solar energy to drive development in his region has brought José Maria Prazeres Pós-de-Mina attention from the rest of the country and from other members of the European Union (EU).