by Katrin Bennhold, International Herald Tribune, France - When it comes to transportation, Marie Schneberger has always tried to be thrifty. As an airline employee earning a middle-income paycheck, the price of gasoline in France, like elsewhere in Europe, has made it prohibitively expensive for her to ever own anything bigger than a Fiat Panda.

by Amy Kazmin and Andrew Jack, Financial Times, UK - Now, even as the World Food Programme and other international aid agencies rush to deliver supplies and services, foreign policymakers as well as many ordinary Burmese are starting to wonder whether Nargis could bring a more lasting change to the junta’s relations with the outside world. If that occurs, it might be not just because of the ruling generals opening their doors but also as a result of western countries’ temporary shift in focus from their longstanding push for Burmese democracy towards more practical issues of helping 2.5m destitute cyclone survivors back on to their feet.

by Siobhán Dowling, Spiegel Online, Germany - With two weeks to go until the Lisbon Treaty referendum, Irish voters are slowly making their minds up on how to vote. Worryingly for Brussels it is the 'No' campaign that is steadily gaining support, as it plays on fears relating to neutrality, taxation and abortion.

by Sheila Johnston, Telegraph, UK - They were the photographs that shocked the world: the inmates of Abu Ghraib, taunted and tormented by gloating US soldiers. The images have been endlessly analysed and you might think that there is nothing new to say about them.But now two of the biggest guns in American documentary cinema have trained their sights on Abu Ghraib. And the affair is clearly far from over.

by Jed Yoong, Asia Sentinel, China - Life in Kota Bahru is strikingly similar to that in Brunei, another strict Islamic state, where entertainment and the public sale and consumption of alcohol are illegal. Beneath a prim and proper exterior are all the carnal undercurrents. As in Brunei, illegal drinking holes exist, but they are strictly for non-Muslims, and tapai -- alcoholic fermented rice — is a popular tipple. Youthful rebellion against medieval Islamic laws simmers, but quietly, and many leave the state, either in search of better employment opportunities or a more liberal lifestyle.

by Sabrina Tavernise, International Herald Tribune, France - Three years ago this month, the government in this eastern Uzbek city turned its guns on its own citizens, killing hundreds and drawing condemnation and sanctions from the West for what was the bloodiest repression since Tiananmen Square. In a Soviet-style sleight of hand, however, the Uzbek government has deleted the event from this city's past, and in recent months has taken some unusual steps: It allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross back into its prisons, released a number of human rights advocates, and enacted laws canceling the death penalty and introducing habeas corpus.

by Deborah Amos, Slate Magazine, USA - Khalid Mishaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, isn't packing his bags just yet, but his comfortable headquarters in a Damascus suburb could be closed down soon. In a surprise announcement last week, Israel and Syria confirmed indirect peace talks for the first time in eight years. Israel has long demanded that Syria cut ties with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, but now the Golan Heights are on the negotiating table once again, and the stakes have changed dramatically.

by Michela Wrong, New Statesman, UK - I used to live not far from one of Africa's nastiest slums, or "informal settlements", as we are told to call them. A guided tour of Kibera, conducted under the watchful eye of a well-muscled local football player, later became a trendy rite of passage for a certain type of well-meaning foreign visitor. But when I was based in Nairobi, no sane middle-class person - black or white - would dream of venturing there without good reason. No one enjoys seeing bare-bottomed toddlers dabbling in drain water. Walking past the corrugated-iron shacks, packed as tight as battery chickens, felt like a violation of privacy. The looks were not always friendly. And then there was the smell. A melange of human sewage, rotting vegetables, chicken droppings and charcoal smoke, it curled one's nostrils and clung to one's shoes for days. It was so much easier to forget the place. And that was exactly what happened.

by Marwa Rakha, Global Voices, Egypt - Back in March 2008, Eman Hashim wrote a post questioning why do Muslim Egyptian women need a “wakeel” - a man who has to sign her off to her husband. Let me give you a bit more insight here: unlike Western cultures where the father gives away the bride as a jest of his approval and blessing, in Islam the marriage is “flawed” if the father, or the uncle if the father is deceased, has to speak on the bride's behalf through out all the paperwork and marriage procedures.

by Ellen L. Frost, Bangkok Post, Thailand - Although the balance of power in Asia is stable, the balance of influence is shifting in favour of China. China has become the number-one or number-two trading partner of virtually every country in the region. Seeking strength in numbers, Southeast Asian governments strive not only to tap into China's new wealth, but also to embed Beijing in a thicket of organisations and dialogues in the name of community-building and closer integration. Despite the significance of these changes in Asia's strategic landscape, for many years now US attention has fixated on the Middle East. High-ranking US officials are preoccupied with Islamist terrorists, the war in Iraq and recent developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Since Asia is stable and peaceful, the president and his top aides pay little or no attention to regional diplomacy in Asia.

by Miriam Mannak, IPS News, Italy - As of May 28, the City of Cape Town had registered 18,861 refugees from xenophobic attacks that have destroyed homes and looted shops owned by migrants in many of the city's poorer neighbourhoods. But some foreigners in even the most badly-affected townships of Cape Town have no desire to leave their homes and are determined to stay put.

by Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet, International Herald Tribune, France - Writing in French under the name Oum Obeyda, she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe. She calls herself a female holy warrior for Al Qaeda. She insists that she does not disseminate instructions on bomb-making and has no intention of taking up arms herself. Rather, she browbeats Muslim men to go and fight, and rallies women to join the cause.

by Jennifer Barrett, Newsweek, USA - Women now own at least a 50 percent stake in nearly 10.4 million U.S. firms—about 41 percent of all privately held companies. But less than 3 percent of those women-owned businesses have achieved revenues of $1 million or more, according to the Center for Women's Business Research (CWBR), a nonprofit research institute. That's half the percentage of male-owned businesses that have reached that milestone. For the past two decades the number of majority-women-owned firms has grown at an impressive rate—around two times the rate of all firms, according to the CWBR—yet their revenues continue to lag behind. "There have been barriers in the system and barriers in our heads," says Nell Merlino, co-founder and CEO of Count Me In.

by Farangis Najibullah, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - With about 15 percent of the population plugged into the Internet, Iran is home to one of the largest populations of web users in the Middle East. But Mohammad says the length of time it takes to open websites is extremely frustrating and is the biggest problem for Iranians who have Internet connections at home. In Iran, only offices and companies are allowed to have high-speed Internet connections.

by Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times, USA - Cuba uses the dominant convertible peso known as the CUC -- introduced four years ago to replace the U.S. dollar, which had been circulating for more than a decade -- and the Cuban peso known as moneda nacional. Those with jobs in hotels, airlines and shops and on the thriving black market earn CUCs, referred to as "the dollar" and worth about 25 times the peso. The peso is the currency given to all state workers and pensioners, which must be converted to CUCs to purchase most goods. The Cuban government retains the peso because it lacks sufficient foreign reserves to back and circulate only CUCs.

by Jenny Booth, Times Online, UK - An international watchdog must be set up urgently to investigate widespread cases of child sex abuse by aid workers and peacekeepers, a British charity said today. Save the Children demanded action after its research found that starving and desperate youngsters as young as six were being coerced to sell sex for food, money, soap and even mobile phones in war zones and disaster areas.

by Amrita Nandy-Joshi, Asia Sentinel, China - These are ruthless times. The current food crisis is an assault on the already difficult lives of the poor in developing countries. Picture this: Afghan women are reported to buy leftover food, otherwise sold as fodder for cows and sheep. A group of Sri Lankan housewives protested outside a newspaper office demanding to know where they could find affordable rice. In Ivory Coast, women clashed over rising food prices; the unrest left one dead.

by Leila Fadel, Baghdad Observer, Iraq - Jinan is in her late 30s. She wears boot cut jeans with lace flowers snaking up the right leg. Her top is a tight fitting pastel yellow and her chestnut brown hair flows just past her shoulder. The devout Shiite Muslim prays five times a day and fasts during the holy month of Ramadan to focus on God and sacrifice. She was born and raised in the southern port city of Basra.

by Susan Brownell, openDemocracy, UK - The progressive ideals of the Olympic movement are part of a complex history that includes deep colonial prejudice. This interplay of politics and ideas has had a profound influence on the emergence of the United America, Japan and now China as Olympics host.

by Katrin Bennhold, International Herald Tribune, France - For Karim Zéribi, the highlight was shaking the hand of the candidate Barack Obama. For Ali Zahi, it was meeting the basketball star, Earvin "Magic" Johnson, his childhood hero. And Mohamed Hamidi still cannot quite believe that the minaret of a mosque he saw in Washington was taller than that in the village of his parents in Algeria.

by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, USA - War veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan came to Capitol Hill this month to testify before Congress and give an eyewitness account about the horrors of war. Like the Winter Soldier hearings in March, when more than 200 service members gathered for four days in Silver Spring, Maryland to give their eyewitness accounts of the injustices occurring in Iraq and Afghanistan, “Winter Soldier on the Hill” was designed to drive home the human cost of the war and occupation—this time, to the very people in charge of doing something about it.

by Fiona Ehlers, Spiegel Online, Germany - Thousands of corpses are floating in Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, but the country's military junta is not taking care of survivors. It would be hard to surpass the cynicism of the generals. An eyewitness report from the Irrawaddy Delta.

by Mona Eltahawy, PostGlobal, USA - That’s the beauty of blogs and those who run them in the Arab world. They have each other’s backs, and they’re determined to stay on the back of their respective regimes.

by Jennie S. Bev, Asia Sentinel, China - In this beautiful tropical country, well-founded fears among minority groups have been rampant and rounds of exoduses of persecuted minorities are expected in the near future. This month marks the escalation of two things that the Indonesian government has been consciously imposing on its minority constituents: the politics of avoidance and the politics of listening to the loudest. That is, Indonesia’s government is notorious for avoiding legal actions against human rights abuses and for bending to Islamic extremists and radicals, regardless of the fact that they make up less than 10 percent of the overall Muslim population.

by Rehna Azim, Guardian, UK - Do British Asians think their portrayal in the UK media has changed? Four years after my original survey, I was surprised at the answers. In 2004 they were mostly angry. The participants in a survey I conducted to gauge the views of British Asians about mainstream media had much to rail against:
• Irresponsible reporting about Muslims and its adverse impact on all Asian groups;
• The poor quality of ethnic media;
• The awful Ferreiras in EastEnders.
In 2008 the general mood ranges from weariness to reflective optimism.