POLITICS: Global, Mideast Insecurity Rise with Suicide Attacks

Just more than week ago, U.S. President George W Bush was triumphantly telling audiences in the United States that ‘'the back of al-Qaeda is broken and we are winning the war on terror''.

/Int’l Day of Indigenous People/RIGHTS: ‘Pay for Destruction’, Indigenous People Tell Corporations

Leaders of the world's 350 million aboriginal people, gathered here to discuss ways to protect their culture and environment, are demanding that multinational corporations accept legal responsibility for policies that destroy indigenous lands and lifestyles.

CULTURE-BRAZIL: Land of Grand Book Fairs and Poor Reading Habits

The exuberance of the 11th Biennial International Book Fair, which opens Thursday in this Brazilian city, contrasts sharply with the limited domestic market for publishers and the weak reading habits of the population of Latin America's giant.

AUSTRALIA: Critics Want Governor General Linked to Sex Abuse Fired

Child support groups are dismayed that Australian Prime Minister John Howard has refused to dismiss the governor general, Dr Peter Hollingworth, over adverse findings by an Anglican church inquiry into the sexual abuse of students by priests while he was head of the diocese of Brisbane.

RIGHTS: Expectations and Numbers Grow for U.N. Indigenous Forum

If attendance is a gauge of expectations, the world's aboriginal people will be demanding much of the second session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues when it opens in New York on Monday.

MIDDLE EAST: Politics Deepens Sunni-Shiite Divisions – Analysts

The nearly 14-century-old differences between Sunnis and Shiites are undergoing another phase in the battle for power in Iraq, but Muslims and analysts say it is political considerations that are heightening the religious nature of the conflict between the two strands of Islam.

POLITICS-THAILAND: Tough Approach to Muslim South Draws Fire

When it comes to the country's Muslims, the Thai government appears to be following a political script that the hawks in the U.S. government will welcome - a crackdown is the best way to deal with a restive people.

ENVIRONMENT: Oil Giant Lawsuit Signals Power of Third World Courts

Attorneys representing some 30,000 Ecuadorian Indians have filed a billion-dollar lawsuit against ChevronTexaco Corporation in Ecuador's Oriente region in a case that could greatly boost the power of local courts in developing countries to hear complaints involving multi-national corporations.

LITERATURE: Sontag, Mernissi Win Spain’s Prince of Asturias Prize

Writers Susan Sontag, of the United States, and Fátima Mernissi, of Morocco, are the joint winners of this year's Prince of Asturias Prize for Literature, announced the award's jury Wednesday.

/ARTS WEEKLY/FILM-BRAZIL: Inmates Sent to Slaughter

"Carandirú", the new sensation at the Brazilian box office, recounts the story of the country's worst prison massacre while also attempting to demonstrate the human side of those who lived under their own laws in the "prison-slaughterhouse" that gives the film its name.

/ARTS WEEKLY/MEDIA-ARGENTINA: Quechua Language on the Air

Descendants of indigenous people in northwestern Argentina have launched a radio station that broadcasts in both Spanish and the Quechua language, as part of a plan that includes the creation of six similar stations.

/ARTS WEEKLY/INDIA: Computerisation Threatens Urdu Calligraphy

Saba Zaidi, a student of fine arts, dreams of being a good calligrapher of Urdu, Arabic and Persian, but she knows there are few patrons left for this ancient art of writing with style.

CULTURE-BRAZIL: Artists Rebel Against State Aid Stipulations

The Brazilian art world has risen up against the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which it helped elect, for a proviso that state cultural agencies will only invest in projects that have a "social side".

RELIGION-LATAM: Churches Call for Alternative to Free Market

Leaders of Protestant churches of Latin America, tired of alleviating social problems that they blame on neo-liberal free market policies, have decided to advance their own alternative proposals to governments and the multilateral lending institutions.

IRAQ: U.S. Forces Fail Iraqi Treasures Again

U.S. forces looked the other way while Iraqi museums were being looted; now they are looking the other way as many of these looted treasures are taken out of Iraq, says Donny George, Director of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad.

/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-NIGERIA: Cleansing the Film Industry

Every weekend, youth of different ages and sexes converge on Nigeria's magnificent, but dying, National Theatre located in this former capital to watch new video films shown by producers before being released for sale to the public.

/ARTS WEEKLY/ART-PAKISTAN: ‘Cartoon is Blank Verse’

Is it valid to render tragic moments and events in illustrations? What is so funny about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, or for that matter, the barbs that the governments of India and Pakistan are trading?

/ARTS WEEKLY/BOOKS-COLOMBIA: Paradoxes of Writers and Reading

A new generation of Colombian writers, taking a different path than the magical realism of their compatriot Gabriel García Márquez, are among the main attractions at the 16th International Book Fair of Bogotá, paradoxically taking place in a country that reads very little and comprehends less, according to studies.

/ARTS WEEKLY/THEATRE-CUBA: Naked Celestina

The months go by and the long queues continue outside the Trianón cinema-theatre in the Cuban capital, where 'El Público' troupe is staging a controversial interpretation of the Spanish masterpiece "La Celestina".

INDIA: Pro-Hindu Groups Turn Trident into Political Weapon

The 'trishul' (trident) may have been carried around by the Hindu god Shiva and other gods of the ancient world, but India's political opposition sees danger in supporters of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party carrying the three-pronged item around - especially with elections around the corner.

HEALTH: Ecuadorian Healers Sentenced, Traditional Medicine Spared

An indigenous healer from Ecuador will serve a one-year sentence in Canada for leading a ceremony where an elder died, but it appears the case did not turn into the attack on the practice of traditional healing that many aboriginal people and their supporters feared.