IRAQ: The Love Stories Are Gone

As statistics go, at least 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the occupation, now in its fifth year. Every one of them has left behind once loved ones to mourn the loss and to think of what might have been.

IRAN: Corruption Scandal Could Become a “Gladiator’s Game”

An Iranian official who accused more than 40 high-ranking officials and grand ayatollahs of financial corruption in a speech to a student group early last month in the city of Hamadan was arrested in Tehran Wednesday.

Q&A: 'One Hundred Reasons To Be Punished With Death in Egypt'

A death sentence in Egypt appears easy to receive - in fact there are 59 laws enabling judges to deprive a citizen of life, covering 105 crimes.

MOROCCO: Local Government Holds Up Development

Lack of political will on the part of some municipalities is hindering an ambitious national plan for human development, activists say.

IRAQ: ‘Special Weapons’ Have a Fallout on Babies

Babies born in Fallujah are showing illnesses and deformities on a scale never seen before, doctors and residents say.

MIDEAST: Israel and Syria in Diplomatic Charade

After an eight-year hiatus, Israel and Syria have resumed negotiations - albeit via Turkish middlemen - on the issue of the strategic Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967. But according to analysts in Cairo, neither side appears entirely genuine in its desire to reach a final settlement.

MIDEAST: Hospitals in Need of Care

In the brightly painted new intensive care unit wing of al-Awda, northern Gaza's only emergency medical facility in the massive Jebaliya refugee camp, doctors, nurses, aides and administrators are ready to provide emergency surgery services for the area's 300,000 people.

EGYPT: Protests Rise Against Fertiliser Plant

For the last two months, controversy has raged over planned construction of a massive fertiliser plant near the port city of Damietta. Residents fear the plant could adversely affect the local environment.

MIDEAST: Remark Raises Oil Price, and Temperatures

As Transportation Minister, one might have expected that Shaul Mofaz would have given greater consideration to the impact his comments would have on the already galloping price of a barrel of crude oil. Maybe he did. But with the scent of elections in the air in Israel, the international ramifications of his comments were apparently not uppermost on his mind. Far more narrow political calculations clearly were.

LEBANON: Celebrities and Celebration Take Their Own Toll

In the dark streets across from the main Hamra road, one of the major commercial arteries in Lebanese capital Beirut, light streams from behind the drapes of a first floor apartment. A politician's speech blaring from a TV resonates loudly in the night. As music cues the closing credits of the show, sudden celebratory gunfire from the political figure's supporters erupts outside.

MIDEAST: Israeli Attack Looking More Likely

The likelihood of a large-scale Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip has crept closer as more rockets continue to land in southern Israel and another Israeli was killed by a mortar shell, further hardening attitudes amongst senior ministers against a proposed truce with Hamas.

MIDEAST: Palestinian Rivals Step Towards Reducing Rift

In the early hours of Friday morning, Israeli warplanes targeted a Hamas-run security post in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, injuring 29 Palestinian civilians, according to Gaza medical sources. In the Eastern Gaza City neighbourhood of al-Shuja'iya, a 27-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli special forces during another invasion.

IRAQ: Animals Too Struggle for Survival

Amidst the huge and growing death toll, it has been easy to forget that animals, in their own way, are finding it hard to survive in Iraq.

MIDEAST: ‘Military Escalation Brewing’

After another round of Egypt-brokered talks between Israel and Palestinian resistance factions, a cessation of hostilities remains elusive as ever. According to statements by both sides, failure to achieve a degree of calm in the short term could lead instead to open confrontation.

IRAQ: Death Toll 'Above Highest Estimates'

The real number of the dead is far higher than even the highest declared in death tolls, many Iraqis say.

EGYPT: Despair Over Two More Years of Martial Law

A parliamentary majority approved a two-year extension of Egypt's longstanding emergency law last week. While opposition figures and human rights groups blasted the decision, government officials justified the move by pointing to the ostensible threat of terrorism.

DEATH PENALTY-MOROCCO: Findings Provoke Calls for Guarantees

Two recently discovered mass graves and a still-secret list of five other places where victims of other alleged extra-judicial killings lie, has shocked rights activists here and raised questions about the genuineness of the process of national reconciliation which was to be crowned by the abolition of the death penalty.

MIDEAST: Cash Gifts Come Back to Haunt Olmert

Even a seasoned, street-smart political brawler like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would require a salvage act of Houdini-like magnitude to survive his current predicament. Engulfed by a corruption scandal, his government is unravelling, his own party is beginning to turn against him and, most critically, his public support has evaporated.

Q&A: 'Arab Legislations Go Far Beyond Islamic Law'

Is Islamic law - Sharia'a - the only legal instrument regulating the death penalty in Arab and Muslim countries?

IRAQ: Through Occupation, The Very Dreams Change

After more than five years of U.S. occupation, the very dreams of the people of Baquba have changed. For a start, they are no longer about the future.

LEBANON: In Beirut, the Party Has Begun

The 'party capital' of the Middle East seems to be awakening after an 18-month slumber. As news of a political agreement between feuding Lebanese factions and an imminent presidential election circulated on Wednesday May 21, Lebanese almost immediately began to gather in the Beirut Central District while the tent city erected by the opposition was still being dismantled.