by Bronwen Maddox, Irish Independent, Ireland - There was no Plan B in Brussels for an Irish 'No'. As the results came in, the reflexes of many in the pro-treaty camp appeared to be to continue with the process of ratification. This would be the worst choice, if legally possible at all. It would tell small countries that their views do not matter -- exactly what Irish voters were recoiling from.

by Sue Branford, openDemocracy, UK - The timing of the United Nations' Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) summit in Rome on 3-5 June 2008 was fortuitous. It had already been scheduled as the latest of the body's regular six-yearly gatherings, but the prominence of food issues on the current global agenda meant that the summit also took on the appearance of an emergency meeting.

by Michaela Schiessl, Der Spiegel, Germany - Four years ago, investors urged him to sell the company. Tanti begged off, telling them: "In a few years, Suzlon will be buying up the leading European companies." As it turned out, he was right.

by Tatiana Zhurzhenko, Eurozine, Austria - Before we talk about European solidarity, we need to trace the emergent fault lines running through eastern European memory.

by Regina Cornwell, The Women's Media Center, USA - In the midst of a global food crisis, advocates are trying to convince the world that women farmers are an essential part of the solution. Women are responsible for over half of the world’s food production. Yet, says Jeanette Gurung, a key organizer of a new network of agricultural women leaders, the international sector concerned with climate change and food policy is so “heavily male dominated in its very core” that women, often isolated on small holdings in the developing world, are ignored.

by Arian de Vogue and Jan Crawford Greenburg, abc NEWS, USA - In a stinging defeat for the Bush administration, the Supreme Court ruled today that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have a constitutional right to challenge their detentions in federal court and that congressional legislation has failed to provide a reasonable substitute for such a hearing.

by Bronwen Maddox, Times Online, UK - Today more than 60 countries gather in Paris to consider Afghanistan’s request for $50 billion (£25 billion) to try to haul itself out of the ranks of the world’s poorest and most dysfunctional states. And today the Irish Republic, which has turned itself in 40 years from one of the poorest countries in Western Europe to the second-richest, much of that with European Union help, votes on whether to approve the new, unifying EU treaty.

by Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow!, USA - More than 3,500 people gathered in Minneapolis last weekend for the fourth annual National Conference for Media Reform, organized by the group Free Press. The thousands of participants took part in panel discussions and strategized on efforts to fight media consolidation and democratize the airwaves. We play the electrifying keynote address by legendary journalist Bill Moyers.

by Claire Bigg, Radio Free Europe, Russia - Kamola, a 36-year-old ethnic-Uzbek woman living in Moscow, was stepping out of a metro carriage on her way to work last month when a blow sent her tumbling to the station's marble floor. The punch came without warning, dealt by a young man wearing brass knuckles. A second assailant then picked up the woman's limp body while his friend struck her repeatedly in the face and stomach.

by Hind al-Safar and Zaineb Naji, IWPR, Iraq - Firdaw al-Baghdadi has not seen her husband in three years. He was abducted in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, and although his family paid a ransom for his release, they never heard from the captors again. Baghdadi, 38, from Baghdad’s Shia suburb Sadr City, cannot find work and her own relatives are too poor to help out, so she lives with her husband's family in cramped conditions. “I don't know what to do,” she said. “Tradition prevents women from working, especially women like me.”

by Madeleine K. Albright, New York Times, USA - The Burmese government’s criminally neglectful response to last month’s cyclone, and the world’s response to that response, illustrate three grim realities today: totalitarian governments are alive and well; their neighbors are reluctant to pressure them to change; and the notion of national sovereignty as sacred is gaining ground, helped in no small part by the disastrous results of the American invasion of Iraq. Indeed, many of the world’s necessary interventions in the decade before the invasion — in places like Haiti and the Balkans — would seem impossible in today’s climate.

by Violet Cho, Irrawaddy, Burma - An official from the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has confirmed that the Burmese government has told the food relief agency that it will no longer be permitted to buy rice from local dealers to feed survivors of Cyclone Nargis.

by Julie de Pimodan, Al Jazeera, Yemen - As global food prices continue to rise, Yemen is hoping a fundamental rethinking of its agricultural priorities will alleviate the pressure on its people. The debate on qat cultivation and its role in supplanting food crops has recently resurfaced and fuelled resistance from a society that views the controversial narcotic as a traditional necessity.

by Elaine Sciolino and Souad Mekhennet, International Herald Tribune, France - The surgery in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 self-dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900. But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity. Like an increasing number of other Muslim women in Europe, she had a "hymenoplasty," a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse.

by Azera Rahman, Boloji.com, India - The numbers tell the sorry story - an estimated 60 million child laborers in India but only 670,000 violations of the law detected in eight years and just 22,588 convictions! Behind the bland government numbers are the millions of young children working in roadside eateries, slaving away in glass factories, hunched up over carpet looms or sweeping and cooking in homes in blatant violation of the Child Labor (Prohibition and Regulation) Act.

by Anne Applebaum, Washington Post, USA - "Will Americans vote for a black man?" I've been asked this question by foreigners of various origins a dozen -- or maybe three dozen -- times since the U.S. presidential campaign began for real in January. Now we have the answer: Yes, Americans will vote for a black man. Which means that it is time to turn this rather offensive question around: Will foreigners accept a black American president?

by Jina Moore, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra Leone - Fatmata Jalloh was just a kid selling pancakes on a rural road in Sierra Leone when a rebel soldier snatched her and made her his wife. "I was a child. I didn't know anything about love at that time ... but he said, 'If you don't take me [as your husband], I'll kill you,' " she remembers.

by Fania Oz-Salzberger, Daily News Egypt, Israel - Americans speak of “Middle America” and Britons of “Middle England.” Both are near mythic places that supposedly embody the authentic character of the nation. Israel, too, has its “Middle Israel,” but it is very different from the place that Americans and Britons describe. Rather than being somewhat provincial, Middle Israel is educated, bilingual or multilingual, and extremely well connected to the wider world.

by Somini Sengupta, International Herald Tribune, India - When the scorch of summer hit this north Indian boomtown, and the municipal water supply worked only a few hours each day, inside a high-rise tower called Hamilton Court, Jaya Chand could turn on her kitchen tap around the clock, and water would gush out. The same was true when the electricity went out in the city, which it did on average for 12 hours a day, something that once prompted residents elsewhere in Gurgaon to storm the local power office. All the while, the Chands' flat screen television glowed, the air-conditioners hummed and the elevators cruised up and down Hamilton Court's 25 floors.

by Melanie Reid, Times Online, UK - It is a funny old world. As food riots break out in Haiti and Egypt and leaders at the UN food summit declare that a relaunch of agriculture is necessary to feed the planet, the great British shopper takes anti- science to new levels by objecting to increased food production.

by Deb Riechmann, International Herald Tribune, France - President George W. Bush's motorcade will speed through European capitals this week, but for many Europeans, the Bush presidency is already in their rearview mirrors. Trans-Atlantic relations are on the upswing as European leaders have moved beyond their anger over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Anti-Bush sentiment runs high on the streets, but that is being mollified by excitement among Europeans about the race to replace Bush.

by Anne Penketh, Independent, UK - The Zimbabwean army and police have been accused of setting up torture camps and organising "re-education meetings" involving unspeakable cruelty where voters are beaten and mutilated in the hope of achieving victory for President Robert Mugabe in the second round of the presidential election.

by Elizabeth Pisani, Prospect Magazine, UK - An HIV diagnosis in Britain is no longer a death sentence—thanks to costly new drugs. But as the spectre of death fades, so do the most visible reasons to avoid risky behaviour. Now the Aids prevention industry has a whole new set of problems

by Elayne Clift, Boloji.com, India - In Kenya, reluctant women find strength to tell their stories of female genital cutting. Israeli and Palestinian women share tales of terror and trauma - and acts of resistance. Indian sex workers talk among themselves of their experiences in Kolkata and elsewhere, gradually sharing their stories with wider audiences. In Europe and North America, women reveal their acts of courage in the face of discrimination, disability and domestic violence. The world over, women are taking to the stage to share stories of oppression and subsequent empowerment. And the impact is measurable and profound.

by Mona Alami, IPS News, Lebanon - In the dark streets across from the main Hamra road, one of the major commercial arteries in Lebanese capital Beirut, light streams from behind the drapes of a first floor apartment. A politician's speech blaring from a TV resonates loudly in the night. As music cues the closing credits of the show, sudden celebratory gunfire from the political figure's supporters erupts outside.