MEDIA-IRAQ/US: The Bad News Is the Good News Is Fake

U.S. Congressional leaders who have been touting Iraq's new "free press" as a sign of progress in the troubled country are upset at the Pentagon's admission last week that it has been paying for "good news" stories written by the military and placed in Iraqi media by a Washington-based public relations firm.

HUMAN RIGHTS DAY: A Wavering Flame Amid the Darkness

Since former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt presented the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the United Nations 57 years ago this Saturday, the world has witnessed - and often ignored - some of the most egregious rights violations in modern history.

US/IRAQ: Bush Policy Rules Out a Deal on Zarqawi

U.S. President George W. Bush's adamant rejection of a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq effectively slams the door on a recent reported offer from Sunni resistance groups to eliminate the al Qaeda terrorist haven in Iraq as part of a negotiated peace agreement.

POLITICS: Arab World Remains Hostile, Fearful Toward US

While the past 15 months have brought a slight decline in anti-U.S. sentiment, public opinion in the Arab world about Washington's policies and intentions in the Middle East remains overwhelmingly negative and deeply sceptical, according to a major new survey released here Friday.

RIGHTS-US: Still at the Back of the Economic Bus?

Fifty years after Rosa Parks, an African American seamstress, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, activists around the United States gathered to celebrate her legacy - and to call for economic justice and an end to the war in Iraq.

POLITICS: The Most Elusive Word

When a Sri Lankan lawyer, Rohan Perera, was elected to chair the U.N. Ad Hoc Committee on Terrorism about eight years ago, a Western diplomat jokingly told him he was going to be "chairman for life"- because "the United Nations will never agree on a legal definition of terrorism".

IRAQ: Armed Forces Sinking into Sectarian Chaos

While the George W. Bush administration launches a campaign to persuade the public that an accelerated buildup of Iraqi security forces will permit substantial numbers of U.S. troops to begin returning home next year, recent reports from Iraq suggest that the security forces - and their sectarian make-up - are themselves contributing to the country's destabilisation.

POLITICS-US: Realists Tighten Grip as Talks Open with Iran

In a new indication that the balance of power within the administration of President George W. Bush has tilted strongly in favour of the realists, Washington's influential ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, has disclosed that Bush has authorised him to open direct talks with Iran about stabilising Iraq.

IRAQ: Was Cairo Meet First Step Toward Peace Talks?

The final communiqué of the Cairo Conference of Iraqi political groups last week appears to be a tentative first step in a process that could eventually lead to a peace settlement in Iraq.

POLITICS: Forum for the (Distant) Future

A key pillar of the much-vaunted Middle East democracy initiative of U.S. President George W. Bush has collapsed - brought down by Egypt's insistence that Arab governments should have more control over grants from a new fund designed to help local pro-democracy groups.

AFGHANISTAN: Farmers Struggle to Kick the Opium Habit

For the first time since 2001, Afghanistan has made a dent in its opium poppy cultivation, but experts warn that the illegal crop could easily flourish again next year unless the country makes real progress toward sustainable economic development.

DEVELOPMENT: Iraq Warned Against “Straitjacket” Oil Deals

Oil exploration deals currently being negotiated between the Washington-backed Iraqi government and multinational oil companies could cost Iraqis up to 194 billion dollars in lost revenues and transfer more than two-thirds of the country's oil reserves to the control of foreign firms, a new report warns.

US/INDONESIA: Renewal of Military Ties Angers Rights Groups

This week's decision by the U.S. State Department to effectively normalise military ties with Indonesia is coming under strong attack by human rights groups and their allies in Congress, who say the move is premature.

IRAQ: Life Goes On in Fallujah’s Rubble

A year after the U.S.-led "Operation Phantom Fury" damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.

POLITICS-US: A Close Call for Al-Jazeera?

The White House emphatically denied a report by a British tabloid Tuesday that U.S. President George W. Bush considered bombing the headquarters of the al-Jazeera satellite television station in Qatar during the U.S. Marine assault on Falluja in April 2004.

POLITICS-US: Cheney Tries to Raise the Stakes

Amid growing pressure to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and mounting charges by Democrats that senior administration officials misled the nation into war there, Vice President Dick Cheney appears to have taken charge of defending his boss and taking on the critics.

U.S.: The Politics of Pushback

On Veterans' Day, Nov. 11, President Bush told troops gathered at Pennsylvania's Tobyhanna Army Depot that, "It is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war [in Iraq] began."

POLITICS-US: More Wheels Spin Off Iraq Policy

In a major new blow to President George W. Bush's determination to "stay the course" in Iraq, an influential Democratic hawk with close ties to the uniformed military has called for Washington to begin withdrawing U.S. troops immediately.

POLITICS-US: Elites Chastened by Iraq War

U.S. opinion leaders who expressed strong confidence in Washington's global leadership in the late 1990s have been chastened by the Iraq war, which has also spurred a sharp rise in isolationist sentiment in the general public, according to the latest in a series of surveys released here Tuesday by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press.

POLITICS-US: Business Booms for Contract Interrogators

This summer, dozens of people converged in the high desert town of El Paso, Texas, en route to spending six months in Iraqi prisons.

RIGHTS: The Harsh Education of an Iraqi Feminist

Zainab Salbi was 11 years old when her father was handpicked to serve as Saddam Hussein's personal pilot, regularly ferrying the former Iraqi president from Baghdad to his hometown of Tikrit.