SOCIETY: Vietnam Still Has No Room for Female Bodybuilders

''It's a pity we can't compete at the South-east Asian Games,'' laments Hoang Thi Thu, one of Vietnam's top female bodybuilders, referring to the regional competition underway here.

CULTURE: Group to Develop Internet Tools With Indigenous Worldview

Type "sacred circle" into the Internet's 'Google' search engine and you will uncover hundreds of thousands of references. Now, one group wants the World Wide Web itself to function much more like the circle, whose concept of balance is integral to many of the world's indigenous peoples.

SOUTH AMERICA: Resurrection of the Great Inca Road

From May to December 1999, Ricardo Espinosa made a 3,000-km journey on foot between Quito and La Paz, head of an expedition of Ecuadorian, Peruvian and Bolivian archaeologists who followed the monumental road built by the Incas some 500 years ago.

SOCIETY: China Gets Makeover through Beauty Pageants

Shedding lingering memories of grey Maoist uniforms and communist commissars who frowned on beauty contests, China has embraced the Miss World competition on Saturday as yet another status symbol in its long quest for world recognition.

POLITICS: Former U.S. President Drives Home Hard Truths

Addressing the Geneva Initiative on Palestine this week, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said something that the world, particularly Muslims, has long believed but which no prominent U.S. public figure dared to say publicly since Sep. 11.

POLITICS-PAKISTAN: Peace Moves Meant to Appease West – Critics

Pakistan's renewed crackdown on Islamic extremism and its peace overtures with India indicate a change of heart on part of the military-backed government, but critics say that these are just moves to appease the western audience and marred with numerous contradictions.

POLITICS-INDIA: Religion Takes Back Seat in Key Provincial Polls

The big surprise in this week's elections in four north Indian states in the Hindi-speaking heartland is the fact that religion has played an insignificant role, compared to issues such as power supply, drought relief and the sheer performance of incumbent governments.

CULTURE-CHINA: Sex Comes out of the Closet

A succession of "kiss and tell" books and "one-night stand" diaries full of what critics call pornographic details have both fascinated and shocked Chinese readers in recent months, making official the emergence of the topic of sex out of the closet.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ FILM-CHILE: Heroes Fed Up with Fighting

The son of the legendary leader of the Chilean Revolutionary Leftist Movement (MIR) has sparked a firestorm of political debate with his new documentary, "Chile: Los héroes están fatigados" (Chile: The Heroes Are Tired).

/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE-VIETNAM: Heritage Buildings Crumbling

Many centuries-old buildings that constitute Vietnam's major cultural assets are crumbling under their load of time, but lack of funds and red tape make it difficult to find a way to preserve them.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC: Haitian Big Band Fires Up U.S. East Coast

"People are heating up. Festival season is here!"

JAPAN: Reports of Crime Fuel More Wariness of Foreigners

The Japanese government's wariness of foreigners in the wake of crime incidents has been rising, undercutting calls by activists for greater integration of immigrants and local businesses' demand for foreign migrant labour.

CULTURE: P.E.N.s Against Intolerance

Some 200 writers, members of PEN International, are meeting this week in the Mexican capital to promote cultural diversity and to defend their duty of "permanent insurrection", as the famed Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa puts it.

SOCIETY-JAPAN: Wanted – Parents For 35,000 Children

The Sakamotos take care of ten, which leaves thousands of children in Japan still looking for a foster home. Their chances of finding one range from indifferent to possible, but not if this couple can help it.

INDIA: Bangladeshi Author’s Luck Runs Out With Autobiography

Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin may have spoken out against atrocities on Hindus in her Muslim-majority country, but that has not prevented the Bengali intelligentsia in this eastern Indian city from denouncing the latest of her autobiographical works as pornography instead of literature.

CULTURE: Haiti’s First Language Still Running Second

"All Haitians are united by a common language: Creole."

RIGHTS-KENYA: Violence Against Women Continues to Take Its Toll

Brigit Namwalo has nothing to celebrate today. As the world marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (Nov. 25), she sits in her house, dejected, nursing a wound inflicted by her husband of 12 years.

INDIA: Gujarat Pogrom Continues to Raise Questions on Democracy

A year after sweeping elections in western Gujarat state by spurring India's worst communal carnage in its post-independence era, Chief Minister Narendra Modi continues to stretch and distort accepted definitions of democracy.

EDUCATION: Expiration Dates and Refresher Courses for Graduates

University degrees should have a sort of ''expiration date'', and professionals should be required to renew them every five years by taking refresher courses, to keep up in a world where knowledge is expanding at a dizzying pace.

ARTS-UGANDA: Kampala Takes Its Place in the Fashion Stakes

Fashion capitals of the world: New York, London, Paris...Kampala? Well, if Santa Anzo has anything to do with this, it'll only be a matter of time.

IRAN: Ethnic Voices Seek Stronger Cultural Identities

When one morning this month a group of around a thousand Azeri-speaking Iranians gathered at a cemetery south of Tehran, they were doing more than commemorating the death anniversary of a man they admired. They were also signalling the growing demand from Iran's ethnic communities for cultural autonomy.