IRAQ: Palestinians Go Down with Saddam

The grass has all but disappeared off what used to be the football field of the Palestinian Haifa sports club on the edge of Baghdad. After more than a year as an improvised refugee camp that at one point housed some 2,000 people, it looks sun-bleached and bent by the wind. Hardly a soul moves outside the tents during the day when the heat is most oppressive.

IRAQ: The Hospitals Need Treatment

The killing of 68 people in Iraq Wednesday, and the injuries to hundreds brought yet more strain on hospitals in desperate need of supplies and equipment.

POLITICS: No Offers of Troops to Protect U.N. Staff in Iraq

The dramatic increase in kidnappings of foreign nationals in Iraq is threatening to undermine the creation of a new multinational security force aimed at protecting U.N. employees and humanitarian workers who are planning to return to the violence-ridden country.

MIDEAST: Think of the Bedouin Too

Going south deep into the heart of Israel's Negev desert, small Bedouin villages sprout in the distance. They seem peaceful and majestic in the desert heat, cut into the landscape dotted with shacks for living quarters and tents constructed with burlap and wooden sticks not far from the 52 active military zones in the Negev.

IRAQ: Allawi Looks for a Good Neighbour

After years of hostility and recent tension over foreign fighters sneaking into Iraq, interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ended a visit to Syria with a declaration that diplomatic relations between the two countries would be restored soon.

POLITICS: Iraq War Straining U.S.-Turkey Ties

While the image of the United States has sunk to an all-time low in the Arab world, the Iraq war has also had a devastating impact on U.S. ties to another predominantly Muslim power and one of Washington's closest and most strategically situated Cold War allies, Turkey, say experts just returned from the region.

IRAQ: Kidnapping Becomes a Lethal Weapon

Kidnapping has become a weapon that is bringing increasing pressure on countries supporting the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

RIGHTS: Don’t Worry About Hostage Taking, Kenyans Still Love Middle East

Poverty has often played the leading role in driving Kenyans to look for employment in the Middle East. But last week’s kidnapping of three Kenyans by Iraqi militants is set to change all that, if government has its way.

MIDEAST: Conflict Spreads Within Fatah

A bullet hole in the curtain of the television room at Palestinian opposition figure Nabil Amr's luxurious villa still attests to the shooting last Wednesday in which he was heavily wounded. Amr survived and is in hospital in Jordan, but Palestinian politics may be in a terminal crisis.

MIDEAST: Conflict Spreads Within Fatah

A bullet hole in the curtain of the television room at Palestinian opposition figure Nabil Amr's luxurious villa still attests to the shooting last Wednesday in which he was heavily wounded. Amr survived and is in hospital in Jordan, but Palestinian politics may be in a terminal crisis.

POLITICS-US: Losing Arab Hearts and Minds – It’s the Policy, Stupid

If U.S. President George W Bush thinks his ''war on terror'' is winning Arab hearts and minds, he should think about conducting it much differently than he has over the past two years...

RIGHTS: U.S. Public Rejects Torture

Two-thirds of U.S. citizens believe their government should "never use physical torture" against detainees, and 90 percent reject sexually humiliating prisoners, as was done by U.S. soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, according to a major survey of attitudes here.

PHILIPPINES: Released Worker Gets Kisses But Reality Bites Others

''There's nothing for me here,'' overseas contract worker Crisanto Molejona declared in a television interview on the eve of the arrival of Angelo de la Cruz, a 46-year-old Filipino truck driver who was almost beheaded by his Iraqi captors.

POLITICS-U.S.: 9/11 Probe Calls for National Security Overhaul

Capping 18 months of work, the bipartisan 9/11 Commission released its 567-page report here Thursday, and challenged President George W Bush and Congress to urgently make sweeping changes to the structure of the U.S. intelligence community.

LABOUR: Iraq Still Attracts Filipinos Despite Govt Ban

The ordeal of a Filipino truck driver freed by militants after his country withdrew its troops from Iraq has not deterred Philippine migrant workers from making their way to the occupied Middle Eastern country through the United Arab Emirates, despite an official ban by Manila.

POLITICS-U.S.: Neo-Cons Target Terrorism By Reviving Communism Foe

A bipartisan group of 41 mainly neo-conservative foreign-policy hawks has launched the third Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) whose previous two incarnations mobilised public support for rolling back Soviet-led communism but whose new enemy will be ''global terrorism''.

POLITICS-U.S.: Realists and Neo-Cons Renew Battle on Iran

A new round in the ongoing battle between realists and neo-conservative and other hawks over Iran policy got underway here Monday as a task force of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published a new report urging Washington to engage Tehran on a selected range of issues of mutual concern.

IRAQ: Report Reveals Lies, Not the Liar

The long-awaited inquiry report into intelligence failures that led Britain to join the invasion of Iraq reveals what went wrong, but stops short of saying who went wrong.

POLITICS: Japanese Deliver Verdict on Koizumi’s Troop Decision

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's humiliating blow in Sunday's House of Councillors election could have a fallout effect on his controversial decision to keep troops in Iraq, say analysts.

POLITICS-U.S.: CIA Becomes Political Football

The imminent choice by U.S. President George W Bush of a new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), blasted Friday for ''groupthink'' and incompetence by a key Congressional committee, is fast becoming the major new battleground between the administration's hawks and realists.

POLITICS-IRAQ: Quandary Over Saddam’s Defense

The rumour mill has been hard at work since Saddam Hussein first appeared before an Iraqi investigative judge after his December capture. The questions, now, are who will defend the former Iraqi president and will he get a fair trail under the new government.