POLITICS: Poor Countries More Optimistic About Future

Public opinion in most poor countries and Central Europe is generally significantly more optimistic about future living conditions for their children than in wealthy, developed nations, according to newly released findings of the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) survey released here Tuesday.

HAITI: Workers Protest Privatisation Layoffs

Late last month, President René Préval announced that Haiti's public telephone company, Téléco, would be privatised. Meeting recently with the Haitian Chamber of Commerce and Senator Jean Hector Anacacis of Preval's Lespwa political party, the president finalised plans to sell off the aging enterprise.

IRAN: ‘Confessions’ on TV to Counter ‘Velvet Revolution’

Iranian state-run TV aired Wednesday and Thursday ‘confessions’ of two Iranian-American academics arrested in May and held incommunicado since then. Both academics have officially been charged with acting against national security and espionage.

EL SALVADOR: Spectre of War Looms After 15 Years of Peace

Violent clashes between the police and demonstrators are sounding alarm bells for the peaceful coexistence that was achieved in El Salvador in the 1990s after 12 years of civil war, say human rights lawyers, analysts and activists.

RIGHTS-MALAYSIA: Blogger&#39s Arrest – &#39Politically Repressive&#39

The arrest, under the official secrets act (OSA), of a prominent blogger and senior aide to opposition icon Anwar Ibrahim has shaken the fast growing blogging community in this country dominated by docile, state-controlled mainstream media.

COLOMBIA: Using Communication to Build Peace

"We don't want to give birth to children who go off to war. We want our children to be filmmakers, painters, dentists, whatever they want, but not to repeat this disgraceful war," a Colombian woman tells IPS.

POLITICS: Iranians Prefer Economic Development Over Nukes

An overwhelming majority of Iranians want improvement in their economy to be the top priority of their government, and 68 percent of that nation's citizens said they would give up their country's pursuit of nuclear weapons if it meant normalising political and economic relations with the United States and the West, according to a rare public opinion poll of Iranians released Wednesday.

POLITICS-US: Bush’s al Qaeda Problem

As U.S. President George W. Bush's military adventure flounders in Iraq, his administration appears to be increasingly depicting the conflict as a struggle between the U.S.-led Coalition forces and the archetypal terrorist threat posed by the shadowy "radicals and extremists" of al Qaeda, often to the exclusion of other political actors in the mainly Sunni insurgency.

MIDEAST: Hamas Has Hopes from Release of BBC Reporter

It was the achievement Hamas had been waiting for ever since it vanquished the Fatah movement in Gaza and seized control of the coastal strip last month. Now, the Islamic movement is hoping that the release Wednesday of BBC reporter Alan Johnston, held captive in Gaza for almost four months, will convince the international community that it is a serious partner and is able to impose order on the chaos-ridden, lawless streets of the densely populated strip.

MEDIA-IRAN: New TV Channel to Focus on Iraq, Shia Issues

Iran’s newly launched English language satellite television channel ‘Press TV’ will focus its coverage on difficult issues in the Middle East such as the United States’ occupation of neighbouring Iraq and the Shiite question.

POLITICS: U.S. Image Abroad Still Sinking

Consistent with its performance since at least 2002, the global image of the United States sank further over the past year, particularly among predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East and Asia, according to the latest Pew Global Attitudes Project (GAP) survey released here Wednesday.

MEDIA-CARIBBEAN: A Chill in the Air

At a Caribbean media conference to mark World Press Freedom Day last month, Patrick Cozier, the general secretary of the Barbados-based Caribbean Broadcasting Union, issued a grim warning.

MEDIA-THAILAND: Tug-o-War Continues over Internet Control

Against the backdrop of a key Thai official’s latest statement, the tug-o-war between the government and campaigners against Internet censorship looks far from being resolved any time soon.

BRAZIL: Journalist Wages Solitary Battle in Amazon

Death threats, physical assaults and 32 lawsuits - this is what freelance journalist Lucio Flavio Pinto has faced as a result of the one-man battle he is waging in this northern Brazilian city, the main gateway to the Amazon jungle.

POLITICS-SRI LANKA: As Violence Rises, Media Climate Declines

The overhead projector cast a ghastly glow on the larger- than-life picture of Darmarathnam Sivaram, the Sri Lankan Tamil journalist abducted and killed in April 2005.

POLITICS-US: Neo-cons Spinning Hearts and Minds

As the George W. Bush administration struggles through its last two years in office, it appears that the agenda of neoconservative ideologues has finally lost its appeal among strategic parts of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus.

ARGENTINA: Psychiatric Patients’ Radio Station Up in the Air

La Colifata was the first radio station in the world to broadcast live from a psychiatric hospital, and has played a key role in the reinsertion of patients in the community. But now the Argentine station, which has inspired the creation of around 40 similar stations in Latin America and Europe, has run out of financing.

POLITICS-US: Iranian "Terror" Expert Has Hardcore Resume

Alireza Jafarzadeh first burst onto the Washington political scene in 2003 when he exposed Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment facility in the small township of Natanz.

MEDIA-SENEGAL: Radio Station Mired in Technicalities

For a while it appeared as if Madiambal Diagne might have found a way around the Senegalese government's apparent determination to keep him away from the airwaves.

EDUCATION-AFRICA: Will eLearning Make Teachers Redundant?

Does electronic learning (eLearning) threaten to displace the teacher?

MEDIA: Young Journalists Explore What It Means to Be Muslim in Italy

With the help of a new monthly magazine, 'Yalla Italia' (Come On, Italy), some young second-generation Egyptian, Moroccan and Tunisian immigrants are attempting to explore and address the stereotypes considered an obstacle to their full integration in this predominantly Catholic European country.