POLITICS-US: Arab Americans Favour Obama by Wide Margin

With less than two months before the November elections, Arab American voters in the United States are poised to vote heavily Democratic, according to a poll released here today by the Arab American Institute (AAI).

EAST ASIA: History Wars

Northeast Asia is a relatively peaceful place. Although the Cold War still divides the Korean peninsula and the Taiwan Straits, there are no hot conflicts in the region. Negotiators in the Six Party Talks are attempting to solve the major security issues of the region through diplomatic means.

RIGHTS-PAKISTAN: Live Burial of Women – Activists Demand Action

Prominent civil rights activists are demanding that the government act against those responsible for the burial alive of five women in Balochistan, in July, that politicians from the province have defended as an age-old custom.

DEVELOPMENT-WORLD: What Is So Fair About Fair Trade?

Fair trade is held up as promoting fair prices for producers and guaranteeing social and environmental standards. These ideas are neither new nor controversial. But the recent boom in fair trade has drawn attention as standards and models multiply while authentication mechanisms lag behind.

BRAZIL: Parties Fielding Too Few Women in Local Elections

There are still too few women on the lists of candidates for Brazil’s municipal elections in October - another example of the distance between political parties and society which has led to the loss of credibility of political institutions.

PHILIPPINES: Organic Farming – The Way Forward

Sustainable agriculture was far from farmer Peter Desisto’s mind when he went to an organic farming seminar organised by the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement (PRRM) ten years ago. He and other farmers attended because they heard that PRRM was giving out loans.

THAILAND: Court Tells PM to Step Down for Playing TV Chef

A passion for Thai cooking provied to be Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej's undoing. A court ruled Tuesday that he had broken the law by appearing for payment on a widely televised cooking programme after becoming the leader of the country this year.

AUSTRALIA: Winning ‘Hearts and Minds’ in Afghanistan?

Responses by defence officials in the wake of a recent inquiry into claims that Australian soldiers mistreated detainees in Afghanistan undermine efforts to win the battle for hearts and minds in that war-ravaged country.

Q&A: "We Will Write About Them"

While formal publishing companies in Nigeria languished through the economic crises that accompanied the structural adjustment programmes of the late 1980s and early 1990s, young Hausa writers began writing about their lives and contemporary problems they faced. Bypassing formal publishers, they self-published their novels, often with the help of a writers' cooperative.

POLITICS-US: Red, White and Blue… But Mostly White

Don't adjust your television set. There is no problem with your signal; it's just that all the colour was missing from the Republican National Convention, which concluded last night with Sen. John McCain's speech accepting the party nomination.

MEDIA-THAILAND: Satellite TV Boosts Anti-Gov’t Protests

On first impressions, Thailand’s political crisis appears to be an attempt to shape the future of democracy in a kingdom that has witnessed 18 military coups. But the anger that drives a protest movement to topple an elected administration has pitted it against the old media order.

CULTURE-CUBA: The Debate Continues

After an interruption of over a year, the Criterios theoretical-cultural centre has resumed a series of lectures analysing the impact of the Cuban government's cultural policy on the arts, one of the tangible outcomes of the debate that shook society here in early 2007.

ARGENTINA: Children of Exile – Strangers Still

While perpetrators of human rights violations during Argentina’s 1976-1983 military dictatorship have begun to be sent to prison, a new study has shed light on a less conspicuous aspect of the regime's legacy: the problems faced by the children of former exiles who are struggling to integrate into Argentine society.

MEDIA-INDIA: Columnists Support Kashmir's Secession

"Anti-national" is the charge hurled in India at the usual radical suspects who argue for the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people.

RIGHTS-CUBA: Dissidents Work for Racial Integration

Dissident groups in Cuba are attempting to open up a debate on the problem of racism in the country, in order to promote "full integration" of all the island's citizens, without discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity or skin colour.

RIGHTS-INDIA: Kashmiris See Power in Peaceful Protests

Firefights between India's armed forces and separatist militants, a feature of life in Jammu and Kashmir state, have now given way to a different type of confrontation - paramilitary troops facing mass protests by peaceful, unarmed demonstrators demanding freedom.

MEDIA-MALAYSIA: Crackdown Follows Electoral Setback

Abandoning a decade-old promise to maintain Internet freedom, the government has closed down the popular and controversial ‘Malaysia Today’ web portal, known for consistently exposing the misdeeds of officialdom and the failings of individual leaders.

MEDIA-PHILIPPINES: Community Radio – Balm in Troubled Areas

Amidst the raging conflict between government forces and Muslim rebels on the island of Mindanao, the religiously mixed population in the North Cotabato region looks to a community radio station as a beacon of peace.

INDIA: Dialogue Missing as Kashmir Erupts

Even as the Jammu region of the strife-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is settling down to normality and peace, a two month-old turmoil in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley shows no signs of abating.

CHILE: Keeping Indigenous Languages Alive

"Mari, mari!" shout the excited group of 20 Chilean, Peruvian and Ecuadorean three- and four-year-olds, using the Mapuche language greeting to welcome a visitor to their intercultural day care centre in Santiago.

POLITICS-US: The Reinterpretation of Dreams

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington and gave a speech that went down as one of the greatest in U.S. history.