by Laura Flanders, GRITtv, USA - Earlier this month and one year after the financial collapse Barack Obama told a group of Wall Street executives that he would not allow them to return to an age of excessive risk and disregard for the consequences of financial speculation. If only those words were true. Laura Flanders talks with Nomi Prins, Dean Baker and James Mumm about why banks keep getting bigger.

by Melissa Chan, Al Jazeera English, Qatar - Sixty years after Mao Zedong's communists took power in Bejing, there are many reasons for China to celebrate. China has become the third-largest economy in the world.

by Frida Ghitis, Sacramento Bee, USA - A peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis is the preferred outcome.

by Farangis Najibullah, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - In its recent report, "Women and Radicalization in Kyrgyzstan," the ICG states that Hizb ut-Tahrir "may have up to 8,000 members" in the country, "perhaps 800 to 2,000 of them women."

by Cindy Sui, Asia Times, China - Sixty years after Taiwan split from China at the end of a civil war in 1949, there are still no clear signs of how the two sides will resolve their dispute over the island's status.

by Deborah Walter, Pambazuka News, Kenya - Although still widely practiced both in Africa and around the world, the practice of polygamy is seldom spoken of.

by Lisa Schlein, Voice America, USA - The UN refugee agency says conflict and drought are forcing thousands of Somalis to flee to Kenya.

by Rasa Balockaite, Eurozine, Austria - "Go West", a 1970s song by the Village People, was popularized again in 1993 by the Pet Shop Boys, which bestowed the phrase with new connotations. Before the 1990s, in the United States at least, "Go West" would refer to the victorious conquest of the West in the nineteenth century or, even more likely, to the appeal of the youth movements in San Francisco and other West Coast cities in the 1960s.

by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, USA - On October 13, 1992, the United States became the world’s first industrialized nation to ratify a treaty on climate change.

by Tunbosun Ogundare, The Daily Champion, Nigeria - Many women and newborns in the country are losing their lives daily to avoidable and treatable diseases. The resultant socio-economic calamity is threatening the nation’s development, with no hope in sight.

by Maureen Dowd, New York Times, USA - Studies show women are getting gloomier and men are getting happier. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?

by Roberta Davenport, Today's Zaman, Turkey - The issue of women's virginity is still an important factor in many relationships in Turkey, affecting women from all social and economic backgrounds and involving complex intersections of cultural and religious values.

by Amy Goodman, Truthdig, USA - A battle is raging over the future of books in the digital age and the role that libraries will play.

by Isabel Hilton, China Dialogue, UK - A regional crisis created mainly by disastrous Soviet policies will only be exacerbated by the challenges of climate change.

by Fatima Shaik, In These Times, USA - Four years after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, the disaster continues.

by Carolyn Cooper, The Gleaner, Jamaica - "If men could get pregnant abortion would be a sacrament." This famous feminist prick (as in sharp point) goes straight to the heart of the current debate about parliamentary reform of Jamaica's backward laws on abortion.

by Hamida Ghafour, The National, United Arab Emirates - Some call it the greatest story ever told. It began with one woman who lived on the African savannah about 150,000 years ago when human beings were just a small, vulnerable blip on a savage landscape.

by Arundhati Roy, Tom Dispatch, USA - Is there life after democracy? What sort of life will it be? By "democracy" I don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: Western liberal democracy, and its variants, such as they are.

by Julia Preston, LatinAmerican Post, Mexicali, Mexico — Census data from the Mexican government indicate an extraordinary decline in the number of Mexican immigrants going to the United States.

by Susanna Thorpe, WRENmedia, UK - Mamadou Goita was interviewed at the Salzburg Global Seminar by Susanna Thorpe, of WREN Media. The Salzburg Global Seminar partnered with the Institute of Development Studies and the Future Agricultures Consortium, bringing together stake holders from around the globe, to work on the challenges facing Africa regarding agriculture and farming.

by Fanja Saholiarisoa, IPS, Italy - Poverty has increased dramatically in Madagascar since January, when a national protest movement to end the regime of former president Marc Ravalomanana plunged the country into a socio-economic crisis. Since then, the number of child labourers has risen by a whopping 25 percent.

by Masum Momaya, AWID, Canada - Google Inc.’s recent restrictions on ads for abortion services in fifteen countries raises questions about the influence of search engine provider policies on freedom of information.

by Alexandra Topping, Guardian, UK - Afghan boys living rough in Calais after destruction of 'jungle' camp.