SPORT: World Cup Revitalises Tired German Spirits

For Germany, it was a World Cup full of surprises.

BALKANS: One Way to Find Harmony

The biggest modern music festival in the Balkans ended Monday morning at the Petrovaradin fortress in the northern Serbian town Novi Sad. The festival was about more than music.

HEALTH-INDIA: Petri Dish for Pharmaceutical MNCs

Pharmaceutical multinationals, seeking to ramp up profits through cheap drug trials, are increasingly turning to India with its combination of a vast pool of poor, ignorant patients on the one hand and skilled medical personnel and fine research infrastructure on the other.

THAILAND: Unending Political Crisis Fuels Talk of Army Coup

Thirteen years after Thailand saw the back of its last military dictator, there is growing speculation in some political quarters that the country may be ripe for another round of military rule.

POLITICS-SRI LANKA: Suicide Squads Active Again

The Nelliaddy government school in northern Jaffna peninsula is nondescript except for a statue that honours the first suicide bomber who blew himself up on behalf of the militant Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and its campaign to carve out a separate Tamil state.

NEPAL: Excluded, Women Seek International Advice

On the evening of Jun 23, lawyer and activist Sapana Pradhan Malla confided to IPS that the deputy prime minister had just told a group of women occupying his office that the committee drafting an interim constitution would be expanded to include two women.

POETRY-COLOMBIA: “I Am Iraq”

The shout "I am Iraq!" was heard echoing through the streets and plazas of this northwestern Colombian city during the 16th International Poetry Festival of Medellín - founded here as a fight against fear. The Colombian armed conflict, which has dragged on for decades, was added in late 2001 to the U.S.-led "war on terror", which Iraq has also been living since March 2003.

BRITAIN: New Shock Waves Come A Year After Bombing

Britain came to a standstill for two-minute silence Friday to mourn the 52 people who died in the London bombings Jul. 7 last year. But the silence, in which Muslims joined, did not quieten a growing unease between Muslims and the rest.

POLITICS-JAPAN: N. Korean Missiles Tense Up Neighbourhood

While North Korea's missile launches this week were not targeted at any particular country, analysts say the reactions in neighbouring countries have been such as to sow the seeds of tension that will linger on.

POLITICS: China, India Reopen Himalayan Trade Route

In a sign that they were putting more than four decades of bitter relations behind them, Asian giants India and China, this week, reopened an ancient cross-border trade route over this misty, wind-swept pass across the high Himalayas.

IRAQ: A Story Left Incomplete

Alaa Hassan never did live to see publication of the last story he had filed. It got caught for a while, as stories sometimes are, in that no man's land between what a correspondent could reasonably get, and what an editor would really like.

ENVIRONMENT: Hard Times for Asian Bush Meat Diners

East Asian diners who hunger for exotic dishes that feature rare animals and reptiles may soon have to wait longer to satisfy their taste-buds if the recent rescue of pangolins and endangered turtles are a sign of things to come.

JAPAN: Soft Policy on Burma Under Fire

Japan's refusal to join the West in slapping sanctions against the Burmese military junta, responsible for gross human rights violations, has disappointed activists and development experts who say Tokyo's continued foot-dragging on Burma is wrong.

SPORTS: Mercosur Loses World Cup Hegemony

"Shameful", "a team with no soul", "at least the Argentines landed on their feet," said indignant fans and perplexed sports commentators here in reaction to Brazil's defeat Saturday, which sealed the loss of the Mercosur countries' longstanding hegemony in the final stages of football World Cups.

RIGHTS-NEPAL: Indigenous People Welcome UN Declaration

Early last century, Parshuram Tamang's ancestors hiked Nepal's jungle trails carrying on their backs disassembled motor cars, the first driven by the elite of this landlocked South Asian nation. Their labour was welcome but their rights few. They weren't allowed to travel outside the country or join the bureaucracy.

LABOUR-UAE: Harsh Realities Greet Migrants to Canada

More than 5,000 Asian and other expatriates, working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), apply for immigration to Canada every year in the hope of a better life - and many return with Canadian passports, empty pockets and soured dreams.

DEVELOPMENT-INDIA: Law Needed to Get Private Firms to Hire Dalits

With the public sector shrinking under the impact of economic reforms, India’s communist-backed coalition government is set on legislation to encourage private enterprises to reserve jobs for Dalits (the broken), or people at the bottom of Hinduism's notorious social hierarchy.

SPORT-COLOMBIA: Football for a Sense of Belonging

They have won three amateur football championships in the Colombian capital, came second in another, and are so far undefeated in a tournament now being played. But the Afro-Colombians of Los Corintios football club have never been included in the Soacha municipal championship.

LABOUR-JAPAN: Immigrants Needed but Face Insularity

Because the cramped Mundo de Alegria school in Hamamatsu city offers Spanish and Portuguese curricula, Latin American immigrants in the area regard it as a godsend for their 120 children.

RIGHTS-CAMEROON: Finally, a Law Against Female Genital Mutilation?

Recently, Cameroon's female legislators could be found under a tree in the garden of the country's parliament, listening to Hannah Kwenti: 17, the mother of a five-month-old baby girl - and a victim of female genital mutilation (FGM).

RIGHTS-IRAN: Predicted Rollback Hasn’t Yet Happened, Say Women Activists

Some women's rights activists in Iran say they are not optimistic that women's rights will make much progress under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But they also say they have not seen the deterioration of women's status they expected when the conservative politician took office last August.