by Kathleen Harris, Edmonton Sun, Canada - Prime Minister Stephen Harpe baffled by Russian 'symbolic' planting of flag.

by Isabel Gorst & Richard Lapper, Financial Times, Moscow/ Sao Paolo - Belarus has turned to Venezuela to help pay back a $456m debt to Russia for gas supplies after Moscow threatened to halve its gas deliveries.

by Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz, Israel - Israeli soldiers said they witness Egyptian security officers executing several Sudanese refugees.

by Camille Paglia, Arion, USA - The state of the humanities in the US can be measured by present achievement: would anyone seriously argue that the fine arts or even popular culture is enjoying a period of high originality and creativity?

by Louise Richardson, The Boston Globe, USA - This week, the British Army ended its operation in Northern Ireland after 38 years. The conduct of this campaign and the way it ended provide lessons to the United States today, if only we are prepared to learn them.

by Ruth Ansah Ayisi, Mail and Guardian, Mozambique - Human trafficking in Southern African, especially of women and children to work mostly in brothels or sometimes as unpaid labour is believed to be on the increase

by Daria Solovieva, World Politics Review, USA - As Russia's government relations with Europe and particularly Britain are entering a new hostile stage, Nashi, a pro-Putin youth movement is assisting Kremlin's campaign against its opponents.

by Isabel Hilton, The Independent, UK - For nearly 50 years, US policy towards Cuba has produced results directly opposed to Washington's stated aims.

by KA Dilday, Open Democracy - The social entrapment of millions of poor Moroccans feeds a hunger for improvement. Can the charismatic reformist Islamism of Nadia Yassine be the vehicle to deliver it?

by Louisa Schaefer, Deutche Welle, Germany - As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon visits California to get a glimpse at the state's progress in "going green," Germans said what he sees could changes European views of US climate policy.

by Janine Gibson, The Guardian, UK - The new Wall Street Journal owner. Bad news story about Beijing? Just put it at the bottom of page 54. As Fox News does when faced with bad news from Iraq. Don't spin it, just ignore it.

by Marina Marshenkulova, IWPR, Nalchik, Russia - Cash-strapped young women reveal how they go abroad to earn money fleecing men at nightclubs.

by Anna Smolchenko, The Moscow Times, Russia - Gazprom's cut in natural gas supplies to Belarus is creating a scare in European countries that their energy supplies could again suffer.

by Beril Dedeoglu, Today's Zaman, Turkey - Undemocratic societies' weapons are often used against the country’s own inhabitants.

by Lynsey Hanley, The Telegraph, UK - For the first half of the 20th century, domestic service was the largest single occupation of British women. Most middle-class households had one or more servants, many of whom had been sent across the country by families living in harsh rural or urban poverty.

by Juliana Taiwo, This Day, Abuja, Nigeria - The Nigeria Nuclear Regulatory Authority has disclosed that the total number of abandoned radioactive sources in oil wells are 34 most of which are high risk with considerable long half lives and cannot be accounted for.

by Inés Benítez. IPS News, Guatemala - Guatemala's attorney general received 1,200 letters from people in 23 countries urging him to speed up the cases against former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt and other military officers accused of genocide and crimes against humanity.

by Michèle Alliot-Marie, Project Syndicate - The EU’s military mission to ensure free and fair elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo has shown what the European Security and Defense Policy can achieve in Africa

by Anne-Marie Slaughter, International Herald Tribune, France - Democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to the end of securing individual liberty. To see the point, Americans would do well to look to America's own history.

by Karima Brown and Amy Musgrave, Business Day, South Africa - President Thabo Mbeki has commented for the first time on a probe into allegations that Jacob Zuma was in cahoots with African leaders to overthrow the government, saying it had not affected his relationship with the African National Congress.

by Lee Joo-hee, The Korea Herald, South Korea - The kidnap in Afghanistan of the largest number of foreigners yet is turning into a long-term and gruesome crisis. The Taliban militants have set yet another deadline.

by Lucy Fielder, Al Ahram Weekly, Egypt - A year after Israel's war to destroy Hizbullah, resistance to US policy in the region is even stronger. France is also departing from the US policy.

by Beverly Darling, WorldNews.com - The Pentagon attacked Senator Hillary Clinton warning her that “public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda.”

by Iman Kurdi, Arab News, Saudi Arabia - As the wife of one the most powerful men in Europe, Cecilia Sarkozy was in a unique position as a negotiator; she had access to power without the ties of office. This made her the perfect catalyst for success.

by Renata Goldirova, EU Observer, Belgium - PM Brown will perhaps not find a soulmate in President Bush. Brown will maintain close UK-US ties, but not as close as his predecessor Tony Blair.

by Helene Cooper, The New York Times, USA - “The idea, as in Bosnia, is to maintain a united Iraq by decentralizing it, giving each ethno-religious group: Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests"

by Muchena Zigomo & Bate Felix, Mail & Guardian, Johannesburg - His name is "Average" and the story of his desperate flight from the wreckage of President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe is an increasingly common one.

by Olivia Chung, Asia Times Online, Hong Kong - Critics say the government figures are "false and misleading". Additional pressure is put on China's working and middle class.

by Chrystia Freeland, Financial Times, UK - I love Gloria Steinem's assertion that women were becoming the men they had wanted to marry. The idea of women shaping the world directly - rather than doing so by being the great woman behind the great man - seems to me to be the essential, emancipating message of feminism.

by Mona Eltahawy, The Washington Post, USA - Egypt has been at peace with Israel for 28 years. For the past 25 years, we have had the same president, who has never visited Israel - just the tip of the iceberg known as the "cold peace" between the two countries.