CULTURE: Mexico’s First International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival

Nearly a dozen full-length films, more than 50 shorts, five plays and several discussion panels are among the fare offered this week at the First International Gay and Lesbian Film and Theatre Festival in Mexico, a groundbreaking event that has taken 10 years to come to fruition.

CHINA: Culture Gone to the Dogs in the Year of the Dog

As China celebrates the arrival of the new lunar year - the most important festival on the Chinese calendar - in Beijing and other glitzy urban showcases of the country's economic miracle, there is a growing sense of cultural identity loss.

SRI LANKA: Peace Hinges on Talks With Tamil Rebels in Geneva

Another February promises a period of hope for Sri Lankans struggling to reclaim normalcy after over 20 years of civil war. This time, government negotiators and Tamil Tiger rebels are to meet in Geneva to help breathe life into a faltering ceasefire agreement.

HEALTH-MOROCCO: Civil ‘War’ Over Condoms

When the Moroccan Association for the Fight Against AIDS launched a campaign last month to raise money to fight AIDS, it had no idea it would have another kind of fight on its hands.

RUSSIA: Jews Face Growing Attacks

Russia's Jewish community has asked Duma deputies to speed up a review of legislative bills that would provide tougher penalties for religious extremism.

JAPAN: Arrest of ‘Horiemon’ Casts Shadow on Reforms

The arrest of Takafumi Horie, Japan’s iconic young entrepreneur and president of 'Livedoor’, the hugely successful web portal, has cast a shadow on the country's much touted reform package that pushes privatisation as the key to an economic comeback.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Satisfaction with an “Afrocentric” Meeting

The first phase of the World Social Forum (WSF), which ended Monday in the Malian capital of Bamako, created a focus on "Afrocentric" issues that was missing in previous forums, said coordinator Mamadou Goita.

MALAYSIA: Race, Religion Cleave Cabinet and Country

Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi has moved to head off trouble brewing between the country's indigenous Muslim-Malays and minority Chinese and Indians, demanding protection against encroachment into their personal affairs by Islamic Shariah laws.

IRAQ: A Town Becomes a Prison

People of Siniyah town 200 km north of Baghdad are angry over a six-mile long sand wall constructed by the U.S. military to check attacks by rebels.

BOLIVIA: Morales – ‘Condor’ in Tiwanaku, President in La Paz

With an Aymara ritual, an official ceremony and a mass celebration, Bolivia will see its first indigenous president, Evo Morales, take office this weekend, with around 10 Latin American presidents in attendance.

SOCIETY: Peace Can Be a Lot of Fun in Belgrade

Young people from Croatia and Serbia are rapidly putting aside the hatred that tore the two apart into separate countries through the bloody wars of the 1990s.

POLITICS-JAPAN: Making Way for Empresses

Chieko Akaishi, a feminist, has mixed feelings about moves to amend the imperial succession law to allow princesses to ascend Japan's revered Chrysanthemum Throne.

PAKISTAN: ‘US Missile Strikes Will Affect War on Terror’

Missile strikes carried out by the United States on Damadola village near the Afghan border, killing 18 people, can fuel religious fanaticism in this country and seriously complicate President George W. Bush's ‘war on terror', say moderate political leaders and security analysts.

NEPAL: Religious Leaders Want to Be Peacemakers

Mother Teresa's successor has urged the warring sides in Nepal's conflict to trade their guns for love just as religious leaders are pushing to play a peace-making role in the land where the Buddha was born. Sister Mary Nirmala, head of the Kolkata-based Missionaries of Charity, and Nepal-born herself, believes that love and compassion can help bring peace to this land, torn by a decade of civil war.

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Cynicism and Hope Ahead of the Bamako Gathering

With just a day to go before Africa's first-ever World Social Forum (WSF) gets underway in Mali, attitudes towards the meeting appear somewhat mixed in the West African country.

DEVELOPMENT: Christian Groups Find New Allies at USAID

The AIDS pandemic in Africa has provided an entry point for U.S.-based Christian evangelical organisations that view some of the small countries in that continent as an opportunity for religious, political and social transformation.

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Women Fall Prey to Coerced Conversions

When Pakistani cricketer Yousuf Youhana, the only Christian in the national team, announced that he had embraced Islam to become Mohammad Yousuf last September, the conversion hit the headlines everywhere.

PHILIPPINES: Jehadi Groups Keep Peace Elusive on Mindanao

Peace remains an elusive target on southern Mindanao island where violence is an everyday occurrence and the line between revolutionary movement and jehadi terrorism hard to discern.

RELIGION-RUSSIA: Muslims Demand a Place on the Flag

A new dispute has erupted over demands by some Muslim groups to remove Christian signs from the Russian flag and other national emblems.

SRI LANKA: Media Targeted as Civil War Looms Large

There was nothing unusual about the two police officers leaning languidly against their patrol car and watching a group of protesting journalists in Colombo on a cloudy afternoon last week. To all appearances, it was business as usual.

IRAQ: Fear Overshadows Eid Festival

What should have been a joyous four-day Islamic holiday for Eid al-Adha which Iraqis began to celebrate Jan. 10, has only highlighted the suffering under U.S. occupation.