AFGHANISTAN: More Funds for Development, Less for Security

In the lead up to an anticipated Taliban spring offensive against the Afghanistan government, international assistance to the war-torn country has increased.

HEALTH-PAKISTAN: Porous Afghan Border Thwarts Anti-Polio Drive

Pakistan has intensified efforts to eradicate the polio virus with a new vaccination drive that targets 12 high-risk districts in southern Sindh province where three new cases were reported recently, bringing the total number of polio incidents countrywide to four since the start of the year.

INDIA/PAKISTAN: Train Bombing as Peace Opportunity

Horrific as it was the fire-bombing of a speeding India-Pakistan train, killing 68 civilians from the two countries, is being seen as opportunity for their governments to cooperate on anti-terrorism operations and reconceptualise security issues.

MEDIA-CHILE: Community Newspapers Take to the Web

Political science student Vlado Mirosevic, 20, is the proud editor of El Morrocotudo, Chile's first community newspaper, where hundreds of people like him post news items of local interest on the Internet.

MIDDLE EAST: Shia-Sunni Violence Spreads in Iran

A week after alleged Sunni militants blew up a vehicle transporting members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), killing 11 and injuring 18, sectarian tension is reported prevailing in the predominantly Sunni southeast that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.

RELIGION: Clash of Civilisations Not Inevitable, Poll Finds

A violent clash between Islam and the West is not inevitable, according to a majority of respondents in a survey of more than 28,000 respondents in 27 countries released Monday.

THAILAND: Bombings Say Muslim Rebels Won’t Negotiate

Malay-Muslim militants in southern Thailand marked the arrival of the Chinese Lunar New Year with a show of force that has left the military-appointed government in Bangkok scrambling for answers.

SRI LANKA: Newsprint Shortage Adds to Curbs on Media

Residents of the embattled northern Sri Lankan town of Jaffna who get to see the ‘Uthayan’ newspaper often get a copy that is thumb-worn and soiled from having passed through the hands of many avid readers.

ARTS: Unexpected Bear Greets Chinese

Noted for its surprises, the Berlin International Film Festival sprang another at the weekend when it announced that Chinese director Wang Quan'an's movie ‘Tuya's Marriage’ (Tu Ya De Hun Shi) scooped the top Golden Bear prize at the end of the 11-day movie jamboree.

POLITICS-NEPAL: People Drag Leaders to Democracy

Many residents of Nepal's capital spent their weekend holiday in their vehicles in hours-long queues for petrol, fearing a flare-up of a general strike that closed the main highway in this landlocked country earlier this month, leading to fuel rationing.

ARTS: Berlin Revisits a Singer’s Story

Protest singer Dean Reed's concerts were foot-stomping sell-outs from Santiago to Baghdad, Warsaw to Helsinki in the 1960s and '70s. But in later years, with his career in decline, his marriage shaky and little prospect of work if he returned to the United States, the despairing Denver-born crooner, who had settled in communist East Berlin in the Cold War years, drove his car to a lake and drowned himself.

POLITICS: U.S. Religious Leaders to Visit Iran

Amid rising tensions between their two countries, a group of U.S. religious leaders will leave Saturday for meetings with Iranian clergy and political leaders, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in Tehran next week.

EGYPT: Clash Builds Up with Islamist Opposition

In an escalation of the ongoing campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood, the government late last month froze the assets of several companies owned by members of the Islamist movement on money laundering charges. Brotherhood spokesmen say the move represents an attempt to stifle the group's political activities and incite it to seek recourse outside the political arena.

TECHNOLOGY-AFRICA: A Rural-Urban Digital Divide Challenges Women

Janet Malika owes her success to the little gadget that is her cell phone. Formerly a struggling food hawker in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, she has become a cafeteria owner since acquiring the device about five years ago, and using it to conduct business.

POLITICS: Moderate Islam – Answer to Insurgency in Thailand?

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's prescription of moderate Islam for Thailand's Malay-Muslim minority may provide the healing balm for the long festering ethnic conflict in the country's southern border provinces of Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani.

DEATH PENALTY-PAKISTAN: Too Many Dubious Convictions Say Activists

The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights have called for an immediate moratorium on death penalties in Pakistan - or many innocent people may be executed.

ARTS: Spotlight on Mandela Film

The 57th International Film Festival in Berlin has got off to a strong start with the South African film Goodbye Bafana on Nelson Mandela's long incarceration emerging as an early front-runner for honours. In all 26 movies are chasing the top Golden Bear award.

POPULATION-NIGERIA: ‘We Want Recount”

Nothing seems to stir up emotions more than census in Nigeria. That's why some Nigerians are still contesting the results of the 2006 census, announced by President Olusegun Obasanjo late last month.

NIGERIA: Vice President Fights for His Political Life

‘'Military democracy,'' this is what Nigeria's vice-president Atiku Abubakar calls the electioneering process that is supposed to produce a successor for president Olusegun Obasanjo in April.

CULTURE-CHINA: Modernisation Drive Confronts the Dragon

As the government completes a modernisation project begun more than a century ago, tensions simmer over the usefulness of such enduring icons of Chinese national identity as the fire-breathing dragon.

POLITICS: Arabs Less Worried About Iran, Poll Finds

U.S. and Israeli hopes of forging of a Sunni Arab alliance to contain Iran and its regional allies may be misplaced, at least at the popular level, according to a major survey of six Arab countries released here Thursday.