by Antonia Juhasz, San Francisco Bay View, USA - The number of Americans who believe that the war in Iraq was a mistake has surpassed the number who felt the same way about Vietnam during that war.

by Shan Juan, China Daily, China - Last year, more than 20 workers at a factory in Wuxi, Jiangsu province that produces nickel-cadmium batteries for electronic products giant Panasonic were found to be suffering from high levels of cadmium, a toxic and cancer-causing chemical.

by Elisabetta Povoledo, International Herald Tribune, France - The Italian government's plans to fingerprint Gypsies living in camps, including children, drew fresh criticism Thursday when a Catholic human rights organization warned that identifying people according to ethnicity would set a dangerous precedent.

by Anna Husarska, Daily Star, Lebanon - As if the armed conflict between Afghan government forces supported by the American-led coalition and the Taliban were not enough, Afghanistan is faced with a crisis that it wishes it could call a success: the Big Return.

by Dina Ezzat, Al-Ahram, Egypt - With the newborn Hamas-Israel truce looking fragile, officials scramble to make progress on phase two issues.

by Stephanie McCrummen, Washington Post, USA - The harsh grip of famine threatens millions in Ethiopia and Somalia.

by Amanda Akçakoca, Today's Zaman, Turkey - Yesterday Turkey's Constitutional Court heard the evidence of Chief Prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalçınkaya, who has accused the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of undermining Turkey's secular tradition and attempting to impose Shariah law.

by Cam Linh, Thanh Nien, Vietnam - Children of poor families in a makeshift trash-picking community are born with names, but without legal recognition of their existence.

by Kitty Holland, Irish Times, Ireland - A “significant increase” in the number of women trafficked into Ireland for sexual exploitation has been recorded by an organisation that offers support to women working in the sex industry.

by Sonia Jabbar, Hindustan Times, India - Until two weeks ago, the annual Amarnath pilgrimage bore testimony to the symbiotic relationship between Kashmiri Muslims and Hindus of the plains.

by Anna Smolchenko, The Moscow Times, Russia - Russia and the European Union on Friday kicked off long-delayed talks on a new partnership pact after the EU appeared to concede to a key demand by President Dmitry Medvedev.

by Lyndsey Layton, Washington Post, USA - The Defense Department, the nation's biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose "imminent and substantial" dangers to public health and the environment.

by Hlengiwe Ndlovu, The Swazi Observer, Swaziland - The 'vote for a woman' campaign has kick-started with verve, whilst raising fierce debate in certain quarters of society about the appointment of women into vital decision making positions in the country.

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 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 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 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 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.

by Jill Drew, Washington Post, USA - Tibetans, traditionally nomadic herders and farmers, are increasingly being lured into a commercial world, a place where Chinese and English language skills are prerequisites for success and ethnic identity is something to be marketed to tourists.

by Zubeida Mustafa, Dawn, Pakistan - Ours is a country that is the proud owner of locally manufactured nuclear bombs, but we are required to import our paper pins from China.

by Nora Boustany, Washington Post, USA - At the age of 6, Betty Makoni could already count change. She roamed the alleys after dark, a basket on her head, selling tomatoes and candles near Zimbabwe's capital.

by Reem Leila, Al-Ahram Weekly, Cairo - The recent violence at Abu Fana Monastery in the governorate of Minya and robberies at a jewelery shop in Cairo's Zeitoun district, in which four Coptic shop workers were killed, have led to fears of growing sectarian clashes.

by Vijaysree Venkatraman, The Hindu, India - Cleverly designed, locally made mobility devices can help people with disabilities get around and do more — not become charity cases

by Felicity Lawrence, The Guardian, UK - Huge areas of the Amazon rainforest are being cut down to satisfy global demand for soya. But how did this crop and a handful of others come to dominate our diet so completely?

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 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 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 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 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 Elva Ramirez, Wall Street Journal, USA - Western fashion often draws from other cultures – as evidenced by batik shirts, sarong skirts or the prevalence of plaid. But when Rachael Ray appeared in a Dunkin' Donuts ad wearing a black-and-white paisley scarf last week, conservatives accused her of donning a keffiyeh, the traditional headdress for Arabic men, and of supporting extremists. Dunkin' Donuts quickly pulled the ad. What seemed like A simple style choice suddenly ignited a long-simmering debate about the politics of clothing and the power of contex

by Elisabeth Rosenthal and Andrew Martin, International Herald Tribune, France - It was supposed to be an emergency conference on food shortages, climate change and energy. But when the microphone was opened to the powerful politicians who had flown in from all over the world, they spoke mostly about economics and politics.

by DeNeen L. Brown, Washington Post, USA - Black president. Two words profound and yet contradictory. Once thought of as an oxymoron, impossible to be placed together in the same sentence, context, country -- unless followed by a question mark. Black president? This century?

by Badea Abu Al-Naja and Siraj Wahab, Arab News, Saudi Arabia - Muslim religious scholars, media personalities, academics and intellectuals from around the globe have arrived in the Holy City of Makkah for a three-day interfaith dialogue that begins today at the request of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah. The king is to open the first session this morning with a speech that will outline the parameters of discussion Muslims should be having with people of other faiths.

by Susanne Scholl, The Daily Star, Lebanon - In Russia, if you have dark hair and a slightly swarthy complexion, you are likely to be in danger. Sadly, Russia's leaders have tolerated, if not encouraged, fear of foreigners and assaults on those whose appearance differs from the average Russian.

by Celia W. Dugger, International Herald Tribune, France - The good news on AIDS: Nearly a million people began life-prolonging drug treatment in developing countries last year. The bad news: 2.5 million people were newly infected with the HIV virus. As new infections continue to far outstrip efforts to treat the sick, the United Nations released a progress report Monday that highlighted both the notable gains in combating the AIDS epidemic and the daunting scale of what remains to be done.

by Alissa J. Rubin, International Herald Tribune, France - Once a byword for torture and disgrace, the American-run detention system in Iraq has improved, even critics say, as the military has incorporated it into a larger counterinsurgency strategy that seeks to avoid mistreatment that could create new enemies. But the gains may soon be at risk.