MEDIA-UAE: ‘Glamour Factor’ Can Push Social, Political Agenda

A semi-governmental media company in this most vibrant of Middle East cities is feverishly working on the much-anticipated launch of 'Arabiya MTV'.

AFGHANISTAN: Poppy Fields Offer Jobs as Fighting Rages

While intense fighting rages around Afghanistan's famed poppy fields in the south, thousands of poor, jobless youths have poured in to embattled Helmand province to lance the lush-green poppy bulbs that promise massive yields of opium this year.

POLITICS: Major Poll Finds U.S. Muslims Mostly Mainstream

Despite deep dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy and President George W. Bush, U.S. Muslims tend to be better assimilated and more content with the larger society in which they live than their European counterparts, according to a major new survey released here Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre.

PAKISTAN: Cleric Turns Heat on NGOs

''These foreign agents are against our religion. How can we allow them to work here when we know they come with an American agenda and support Israel?" asked Maulana Fazalullah, the pro-Taliban cleric, referring to non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

MEDIA-THAILAND: Community Radio Refuses to Go Silent

They may still be on the margins of the country's media landscape with their limited reach on the airwaves and small audiences, but Thailand's community radio stations are refusing to go silent.

IRAN: Nuclear Parleys Run Parallel to Iraq Talks

While the Iranian regime has been categorical that negotiations with the European Union over its controversial nuclear programme are isolated from planned talks with the United States over security in Iraq, the timing of the parleys are such that overlap may be hard to avoid.

EGYPT: Islamist MPs In the Dock

In another escalation of the government's ongoing campaign against the Islamist opposition, two MPs from the Muslim Brotherhood were stripped of parliamentary immunity this month after being briefly detained by police.

PAKISTAN: Despite Odds Village Girls Get an Education

Shumaila is sitting for her school certificate exam this month. But that does not relieve her from daily chores that include tending to dozen or so head of cattle.

MIDDLE EAST: Iran Cosies up to UAE, Against US

It was billed as a meeting to intensify cooperation in the trade and energy sectors between two neighbouring countries suspicious of each other. But it also had to do with the United States.

MEDIA-AUSTRALIA: Tightening ‘Anti-Terrorism’ Censorship

The prospective widening of Australia's censorship laws to crackdown on material that advocates terrorism has alarmed civil society groups.

POLITICS-BENIN: A Drubbing in National Elections Turns Attention to Local Polls

Out of 250 candidates, just a handful triumphed: not an impressive track record by any measure. So, Benin's women are already looking ahead to the next election.

POLITICS-US: Father of Christian Zionism Leaves the Building

The right-wing U.S. Christian evangelist Jerry Falwell, who died Tuesday at the age of 73, is perhaps best known for his fundamentalist social positions and tirades against lesbians, gays and feminists, not to mention "pagans", "abortionists" and assorted other miscreants.

VENEZUELA: Museums Throw Open Their Doors to the Disabled

"We drew a fat woman with little dots. I like learning to draw. Maybe I'll be an artist later on," Lisette, a 15-year-old mentally disabled girl who goes every Friday from her school in the south of the Venezuelan capital to the Alejandro Otero Museum, told IPS.

DEATH PENALTY-IRAN: Execution Surge Bucks Worldwide Trend

The near-doubling of the number of executions in Iran to 177 prisoners in 2006 has only steeled the resolve of human rights activists here to raise public awareness of the idea that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent to crime and should be abolished as inhuman.

RELIGION-MALAYSIA: Dismay at Cancellation of Islam-Christian Meet

Malaysia's sudden move to cancel, at the 11th hour, an international inter-faith conference in mid-May between Islam and Christianity is a major blow to the country's image as a tolerant multi-ethnic nation, opposition political leaders and civil society critics said.

PAKISTAN: Karachi Allowed to Burn, Say Residents

"Pervez Musharraf should apologise to the nation for what happened in Karachi," says a fragile, 81-year-old Yusufali, angrily referring to a rash of ethnic violence which left 45 people dead and more than 150 others injured over the weekend.

FILM-BRAZIL: Tortured Monks

A Brazilian man strides forcefully through a forest. His bushy beard hides any emotion on his face. Using a short ladder to mount a wall, he climbs on to a branch of an enormous tree. He ties a rope, carried under his coat, around the branch, and hangs himself.

SRI LANKA: &#39Flying Tiger&#39 Raids Pose Hard Questions

By successfully carrying out air raids on military and economic targets in and around the capital, separatist rebels have demonstrated a new capacity to wage ‘all-out' war in their fight to carve out a separate state for the Tamil ethnic minority in Sri Lanka.

RELIGION-BRAZIL: A New Saint to Help Stem the Loss of Adherents

"We have to say no to the media that ridicule the sanctity of marriage and virginity before marriage," Pope Benedict XVI said Friday as he canonised Friar Antonio de Sant'Anna Galvão, Brazil's first native-born saint, at an open-air mass attended by a huge crowd in this southern Brazilian city.

POLITICS-US: Religious Right Recruits Bush Loyalist

In mid-March, the Family Research Council (FRC), Washington's premiere right-wing religious lobbying outfit, announced that J. Kenneth Blackwell had been hired on as a "senior fellow for family empowerment".

TURKEY: Chilling Mid-Summer Elections Coming Up

The generals are in their offices, the troops and tanks in the barracks, the students at school, and the tourists in the bazaars. Life in Turkey is back to normal. Abdulah Gül's decision to withdraw his controversial candidature to the Turkish presidency has made this possible.