by Surika Van Schalkwyk, Mail & Guardian, South Africa - More than a month after xenophobic attacks shook Gauteng, the feeling of desperation among thousands of foreigners housed at temporary shelters in the province seems to have worsened.

by Ilene R. Prusher, Christian Science Monitor, USA - Hamas, which for more than 20 years has been the Palestinian militant movement that most fervently rejected peace with Israel, today finds itself in the odd position of being the group trying to get its comrades in arms to hold their fire against the Jewish state.

by Erwida Maulia, The Jakarta Post, Indonesia - With rampant child labor denying many the right to an education, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said Thursday the key to fighting it was education.

By Anna Smolchenko, St. Petersburg Times, Russia - For the next few days, this small town deep in a Siberian forest will bask in the spotlight as European and Russian officials try to move their stalled partnership forward.

by Lindsey Hilsum, New Statesman, UK - The economic order was transformed not by any altruistic movement or political awakening, but by globalised capitalism.

by Elitsa Vucheva, EU Observer, Turkey - Both the EU and human rights groups on Wednesday (26 June) criticised EU candidate country Turkey for the rising number of reports of torture and maltreatment.

by Sophia Ann Torres, Institute for War & Peace Reporting, Philippines - They are called the country's "new heroes”, but Filipino migrant workers – who sent home record remittances of 14.4 billion US dollars in 2007 – can pay a heavy price for supporting their relatives back home, often facing discrimination and exploitation.

by Rasha Saad, Al-Ahram, Egypt - As Iran seems reluctant to freeze its nuclear activities in return for technological and economic incentives, Western powers are preparing a fourth round of sanctions.

by Dawn Walton, Globe and Mail, Canada - The mentally ill are often saddled with a double stigma, cycling through the justice system without getting treated for underlying disorders.

by Nayantara Sahgal, Outlook India, India - India is a mini-world with a multicultural population where people don't always see eye to eye. There should be room for competing ideas in a democracy—but if I cannot disagree with someone without vandalising his house or burning his book or bashing his head in, then this method of banning, unacceptable to me, amounts to terrorism.

by Skye Wheeler, Inter Press Service, Italy - Nyandeng Akot rushed out of the rude shelter of thatch and plastic sheeting pinned against the side of a tree with sticks. Grabbing a passing aid worker's arm, she said she has nothing except the four children that she grabbed when she began running from renewed fighting in Sudan's Abyei area a month ago.

by Pamela Constable, Washington Post, USA - Two years ago, Firas Safar was a successful Baghdad printer, winning contracts with U.S. authorities to produce brochures for aid missions, posters for army units, and several million copies of the new Iraqi constitution.

by Barçin Yinanç, Turkish Daily News, Turkey - Various stories narrating the "Islamization" of society have been circulating among the conservative urban bourgeoisie in Europe, according to an observer living in Austria.

by Tamar Rotem, Ha-aretz, Israel - Judith Klein is a humble, shy woman and a pioneer of workers' rights in the ultra-Orthodox community. Klein has created the first women's workers union in her sector - and in the process incurred the wrath of many of her peers.

by Saskia Sassen, openDemocracy, UK - It is surprising to see the high price in terms of ethical and economic costs that powerful ‘liberal democracies' seem willing to pay in order to control extremely powerless people who only want a chance to work.

by Joanna Lillis, Eurasia Net, USA - Nearly two months after the European Union ruled that sanctions against Uzbekistan would remain suspended for six months, there are signs that Western governments continue to seek rapprochement with Tashkent.

by Katie Vandever, Inter Press Service, Italy - Two years after the African Union mandated Senegal to conduct the trial of Chadian dictator Hissène Habré, who is accused of thousands of political murders during his eight-year reign, the prosecution remains in limbo, six human rights groups complained in a joint statement Monday.

by Melissa Silverstein, Women's Media Center, USA - The news regarding women directors of fictional films in Hollywood continues to be bleak: in 2007, only 6 percent of these films were directed by women. But the non-fiction film world is a whole different story.

by Carlotta Gall, International Herald Tribune, France - Pakistan is in a leaderless drift four months after elections, according to Western diplomats and military officials, Pakistani politicians and Afghan officials who are increasingly worried that no one is really in charge.

by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, USA - Muslims can seek rulings on family or property issues from Sharia councils, which work in cooperation with the civil courts.

by Casey Greenfield and Jeff Greenfield, Slate Magazine, USA - A father-daughter smackdown over sexism and the media's coverage of Hillary Clinton.

by Angela Robson, Le Monde Diplomatique, France - The case of Laos shows the extreme need for the new international ban on cluster bombs. Thirty years after the last bomb was dropped there in the secret war on Vietnam’s ‘other theatre’, the Laotians treat the unexploded ordnance as a natural resource to be exploited, dangerously, for its metal content.

by Patricia Grogg, IPS News, Cuba - Cuba is paradoxically the same, yet not the same, under President Raúl Castro, who said he would change "everything that should be changed" to perfect the socialist path taken by the revolution nearly half a century ago. While most of the expected or predicted transformations have yet to materialise, the stage is being set by ending some of the prohibitions that particularly irritated a society educated for decades to be egalitarian.

by Celia W. Dugger and Barry Bearak, International Herald Tribune, France - Only five days before Zimbabwe's presidential runoff election, the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced Sunday that he was pulling out of the race because armed forces backing President Robert Mugabe have made it clear that anyone who votes for Tsvangirai faces a real possibility of being killed.