by Amelia Hapsari, Asia Calling, Indonesia - There’s nothing special about the dance floor in China Disabled Art Center, except that it has no music. The dancers are all deaf and mute.

by Zainab Salbi, Fora TV, USA - Women for Women founder Zainab Salbi remembers her childhood in war-torn Iraq, saying we privilege the military "front line" of war at the expense of ordinary people's everyday experience with war.

by Julie Kuol, Sudan Tribune, France - Soon the mistreated people of Darfur will form a human shield to protect Sudan’s president. Driven from their family lands, they have suffered bombings, starvation, rapes, beatings, torture and murder. Displaced to camps, they are yet harassed by paramilitary forces. The president of Sudan has ultimate responsibility for their victimisation. And despite this the Darfuris will protect him to their last breaths.

by Ellen Goodman, Seattle Times, USA - George W. Bush's shadow will hover over the country long after he's gone, in the shape of John Roberts and Samuel Alito. In just three years and counting, the Roberts court has chilled desegregation efforts, allowed the first abortion ban with no exception for a woman's health, made it harder to claim employment discrimination, and easier to mix church and state.

by Sanitsuda Ekachai, Bangkok Post, Thailand - Burma is fierce and heartless, Cambodia cannot be trusted and Laos is inferior to Thailand. Everyone knows this is true, because the history textbooks say so.

by Karin Kloosterman, Haaretz, Israel - "A Slim Peace" is a group founded in 2006 by Yael Luttwak, a 36-year-old American-Israeli filmmaker who grew up in Washington D.C. Struggling with her own weight issues in Israel, she rounded up a group of 14 Israeli and Palestinian women to document their shared experiences, as they met in Jerusalem over a six week period.

by Raenette Taljaard, The Times, South Africa - Motlanthe faces extreme expectations as the government’s financial resources shrink.

by Beena Sarwar, Inter Press Service, Italy - Political analysts have long been warning the United States and Pakistan governments that there are no easy military solutions in prosecuting the global ‘war on terror’ which may now have become inextricable from ‘home-grown’ militancy.

by Fanou Filali, France 24, France - Facing a long period of drought, the Australian government is buying back water rights from farmers, which could mean the end of irrigation townships like Coleambally, in the southern part of New South Wales.

by Amy Goodman, Truthdig, USA - A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well.

by Eva Sohlman, World View, USA - I find there is something very sad about this Palinomania. It seems she has become the personification of the identity struggle America is fighting while its economy is on the brink of collapse. McCain’s pick of her plays straight into what I see as a desperate nostalgia for the past -- a nostalgia fueled by a fear of a future where the world order is changing and America’s role as the greatest superpower is faltering.

by Heidi Elisabeth Sandnes, Kilden, Norway - The medical profession is increasingly able to help infertile couples become happy parents. But when it is possible to buy an egg cell from a Russian woman, implant the embryo in an Indian womb and take the finished baby home to Norway, the ethics of medical technology gets mixed with discussions of class and race.

by Vered Lee, Haaretz, Israel - "There's no woman who wants to work in prostitution. When I sometimes pass by in my car and see women who are still in that world it breaks my heart. It's hell. You have to do everything possible to remove women from such situations. It requires profound rehabilitation and help. After all, we don't know anything other than life on the street."

by Erika Fry, Bangkok Post, Thailand - The number of Americans living abroad is put somewhere between 4-10 million (the figure remains too difficult for the US Census Bureau to track). And though the population has historically been woefully under-represented in elections (only one million registered in 2004), every citizen of legal voting age - no matter how long they've been away from the States - has the right to vote in the state they last resided.

by Sonja Pace, Voices of America, USA - Precious stones and metals have long held an attraction, sometimes a fatal one. The gem trade is a multi-billion dollar business, and precious stones are a highly prized commodity. This has helped some countries develop into success stories and has provided sustenance for families in some of the world's poorest places. But it has also dragged others into despair. The gem trade has been used to finance wars, terrorize civilians and keep despots in power. VOA's Sonja Pace looks at the human cost of the gem industry.

by Nomi Prins
Mother Jones, USA

Across the media, the proposal has been described as the largest government intervention since the Great Depression, but it by no means delivers the financial stability to the banking system or the economic security to the general population that the post-Great Depression Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 did.

The plan would not change regulation, despite some vague language: "The Secretary shall review the current state of the financial markets and the regulatory system and submit a written report to the appropriate committees of Congress not later than April 30, 2009." So Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, or his successor, gets to ponder what should be done with the system—but can conclude that reforming it would make things worse.

by Lauren Gelfond Feldinger, The Jerusalem Post, Israel - When the Palmah and Hagana were merged into the newly created Israel Defense Force in 1948, a group of women headed the carrier pigeon unit. It was not a harbinger of things to come: Most of their female peers would serve in clerical roles, though women were active partners during the battle for independence.

by Ann Pettifor, The Guardian, UK - The best way out of the economic crisis is to cut interest rates, create jobs and raise incomes.

by Atty. Rita Linda V. Jimeno, Manila Standard Today, Philippines - Bishops block the passage of a law that seeks to promote quality of life through an informed choice about pregnancy and planning one’s family. The bishops and religious groups claim that the Reproductive Health Bill is anti-life and pro-abortion. But I have read and listened to debates from both the supporters and detractors of the bill and see the contrary.

by Michelle Goldberg, The Nation, USA - "To understand Sarah Palin, you have to realize that she is a religious fundamentalist," said Howard Bess, a retired liberal Baptist minister living in Palmer. "The structure of her understanding of life is no different from a Muslim fundamentalist."

by Nicole Pope, Today's Zaman, Turkey - The wave of Turkey-skepticism that has swept through European public opinion in recent years has undoubtedly cooled Turks' enthusiasm for European Union accession. Nowhere has the opposition to Ankara's bid been expressed as bluntly and tactlessly as in France.

by Adeline Percept, France 24, France - Spain is increasingly seeking France's help against the Basque nationalist groups ETA and Batasuna, which Spain considers the political arm of the terrorist ETA and which has been barred in Spain from taking part in elections since 2003.

by Jane Madembo, The Zimbabwe Times, Zimbabwe - Never mind that the people of Zimbabwe are struggling, hungry, and jobless. Never mind that they want change. He alone has the solution to the country’s problems. The solution according to Mugabe is that the West shouldn’t interfere in Zimbabwe’s politics. They should look the other way when he abuses people. They should look the other way and ignore the hungry stream of Zimbabwean refugees arriving on their borders.

by Marion Kraske, Der Spiegel, Germany - Jörg Haider used to be Austria's far-right scourge, the populist who could win elections. Now Heinz-Christian Strache, his former protégé, has stepped into his shoes. The two men hate each other, but dissatisfaction among Austrian voters this Sunday could give them unprecedented power.

by Sherine Tadros, Al Jazeera, Qatar - Diyala province has become the most violent region in Iraq in the last few years. Now, after a series of joint operations with the Iraqi forces, US troops are withdrawing.

by Sandra Steingraber, Orion Magazine, USA - How to tell a six year old where all the birds and bees have gone.

by Elena Lesley
Granta Magazine, UK

Chit Leang does not know his real name or his age or who his parents were. He was a small child in 1975 when the Khmer Rouge seized control of Cambodia, he tells me, and his memories from that time come back as disjointed images. We talk outside his modest restaurant, our faces damp from the mid-day sun, and Chit describes, in vivid detail, the gunshots that called him to lunch each day and the flat plates on which his Khmer Rouge comrades spooned out watery rice porridge. What happened to his entire family, Chit does not know. Like so many other Cambodians, they disappeared.