by Rafaela von Bredow, Der Spiegel, Germany - A British biotech lab has released huge numbers of genetically modified mosquitoes in an effort to combat dengue fever. But locals, some say, were not adequately informed of the experiment -- and now a debate has erupted over the potential dangers to humans.

by Mariella Radaelli, European Journalism Centre, Netherlands - Why are spiritual programmes flourishing on local private television channels? The reason seems to be that small channels have established a large amount of contractual agreements with psychics, in order to secure a solid base of paid sponsorship to help them survive.

by Eleanor Cooney, Mother Jones, USA - Like some ugly old wall-to-wall carpeting they've been yearning to get rid of, they finally, finally loosened a little corner of Roe. Now they can start to rip the whole thing up, roll it back completely, and toss it in the Dumpster.

by Juliane von Mittelstaedt, Der Spiegel, Germany - The West's sanctions against Iran have made it harder for people there to get their hands on various luxury goods. But, for the inhabitants of a tiny Omani port just across the Strait of Hormuz, the sanctions have been a goldmine.

by Sara Ritchey, Religion Dispatches, USA - The growth in number of married Catholic priests in the U.S. stems from the increasing animosity of conservative Episcopalians who disagree primarily with the Anglican Communion’s ordination and promotion to the episcopacy of women and self-identifying, partnered gay people.

by Juliane von Mittelstaedt, Der Spiegel, Germany - Veiled women, radical rabbis and gender segregation: Israel is facing a rise in the influence of ultra-Orthodox Jews. Their efforts to impose a strictly conservative worldview have led to growing tensions with the country's secular society. A resolution to the conflict is vital for Israel's future.

by Mac McClelland, Mother Jones, USA - The ramifications of this ongoing battle have been huge: More than 500,000 internally displaced people living without villages, infrastructure, or any kind of security whatsoever. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring countries or been resettled by the UN as far away as the United States. Countless civilians have been raped and murdered at the hands of the Burmese army.

by Mariana Baabar, Outlook, India - Pakistan in turmoil: discontent on the streets, political ferment, and ‘Memogate’.

by Elspeth Dehnert, JO, Jordan - Along Jordan’s northern border, a team of women is doing one of the most dangerous jobs in the country—clearing landmines. They’re the first all-female de-mining squad in the Middle East.

by Melissa del Bosque, Texas Observer, USA - It used to be that the mission of law enforcement was to prevent and solve crimes. The military's mission was to fight the foreign enemy on the battlefield. But now the two have become dangerously muddled. Who is the enemy and what exactly is the mission? DPS' mounted machine guns and armored boats are something more akin to weaponry used by the U.S. Navy not civilian law enforcement.

by Christine Shearer, Conducive Chronicle, USA - In a recent article in National Journal, Americans for Prosperity (AFP) President Tim Phillips said there is no question that AFP and others like it have been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science: “We’ve made great headway. What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril.”

by Lily Yeh, Yes!, USA - On the industrial outskirts of Beijing, the transient children of the world’s largest migration taught artist Lily Yeh about finding healing and rootedness in creative power.

by Nadezhda Petrova, Russia Beyond the Headlines, Russia - Between 60 and 70 percent of Russia’s vast landmass is covered by permafrost, and most of Russians known mineral reserves lie in frozen ground. Developing oil and gas fields ultimately present a much bigger threat to the permafrost than global warming.

by Talli Nauman, Yes!, USA - “Our ancestors made a treaty with the U.S. government,” Red Cloud recounts. But they also made “a pact with the Creator for seven generations”—hearkening to a well-known prophecy that they would suffer if they did not provide for their descendants’ future prosperity.

by Ira Trivedi, Outlook India, India - Indian couples are exploring a few ‘open’ ways out of desultory middle life.

by Sarah Morice-Brubaker, Religion Dispatches, USA - In a spirit of nerdy parlor-game fun more than serious analysis, I’ve compiled my own hypotheses, sticking within my own tradition of Christianity since it’s the one I know best and since I don’t like plundering other people’s belief systems for levity.

by Carol Warren, Inside Indonesia, Australia - A community in western Bali hopes that government regulation and a shift to eco-tourism will save it from the decline of its traditional fishing industry.

by Annette Langer, Der Spiegel, Germany - The murders of African street vendors by a right-wing extremist writer in Florence have shocked Italy. Questions are now emerging about whether the gunman acted alone. But one thing seems certain, he was close to a right-wing radical group that has a pop culture appeal admired even by Germany's neo-Nazis.

by Carol Rosenberg, Foreign Affairs, USA - In a strange twist of history, Congress, through its control of government funds, is now imposing curbs on the very executive powers that the Bush administration invoked to establish the camps at Guantánamo in the first place.

by Kate Sheppard and James West, Mother Jones, USA - In climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, the most urgent calls for action have come from the world's small island nations. For many of those nations, the negotiations aren't about some far-off, abstract problem. It's something they're already living with, as a new Australian research project on the dramatic climate shifts underway for 15 Pacific nations reaffirmed this week.

by Beth Schwartzapfel, Mother Jones, USA - How a rapist's confession forced Rick Perry, champion of Texas justice, to pardon a dead man.

by Meghan Casserly, Forbes, USA - Despite the case-by-case expectations of equality in gender roles, culturally we haven’t let go of the paternalistic authority of men over women. And stories about the “decline” of our men-folk aren’t making things better for any of us.

by Katherine Stewart, Religion Dispatches, USA - Church-planting in public schools is just one of the dozens of religiously-driven initiatives made possible largely through judicial activism on the right: a combination of a surge in self-identified Christian law firms, along with a Supreme Court increasingly hostile to church-state separation.

by Fawziah Selamat, Inside Indonesia, Australia - Villages hope a regulation allowing them to manage forests will protect them from commercial interests.

by Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Atlantic, USA - Fifty years ago this month, Jane Jacobs published Death and Life of Great American Cities and changed the way the world understands cities. Yet even when she's acknowledged as an important urban thinker, the 'housewife' qualifier is invariably included.

by Cathrin Schaer, Der Spiegel, Germany - Lina Alabed, the maker of a new film about two women in Syria, discusses the role females have played in the Arab Spring, the equalizing effect of street protests and why it is hard to make documentaries that are critical of the regime in Damascus.

by Amy Borovoy, Dissent, USA - Roe v. Wade created the possibility for women to have control over their lives and choices. But the discourse of "choice" alone has not provided a sustaining moral framework for handling the necessity of abortion, which will always be a final recourse.

by Emily Badger, The Atlantic, USA - “We built the wrong product in the wrong location, and nobody wants it any more,” he says. “That’s the reason for the housing crisis, and therefore the mortgage crisis, and therefore the Great Recession.”

by Tina Dupuy, The Atlantic, USA - When it comes to women, Occupy is really a microcosm of the greater culture at large. America's gender conflict fault-lines are making a familiar reappearance inside Occupy, with results both predictable and novel.

by Nora Kayserian, IANYAN MAG, USA - Queering Yerevan, formerly known as the Women-Oriented Women’s Collective, is a mosaic of female artists, writers and activists from various countries and differing backgrounds from 2007 to 2011. The group initially joined forces to produce creative art events in Yerevan but percolated in to something bigger.

by Helene Zuber, Der Spiegel, Germany - Spaniards will go to the ballot boxes this Sunday for parliamentary elections in which polls predict that the conservatives will wrest power from the socialists. Though the party's leader has fewer ideas and decidedly less charm, voters have simply grown too disappointed in the socialists' efforts to salvage the country's ailing economy.

by Heather Horn, The Atlantic, USA - Germans are widely hostile to far-right groups, but opposition to multi-culturalism is on the rise -- and getting violent.

by Liana Aghajanian, Ianyanmag, USA - More than a year after Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani’s stoning sentence on account of adultery was suspended, international groups are campaigning to influence the Iranian governments decision to remove the barbaric practice from the country’s penal code.

by Fiona Ehlers, Der Spiegel, Germany - Things are getting lonely at the top for Silvio Berlusconi. After members of his own party distanced themselves from the Italian prime minister, business owners are now calling for his resignation.

by Diane Wueger, The Atlantic, USA - As wars become less about states and more about societies, women can play a greater role in shaping or ending conflicts. So why do we still think of war as inherently male?

by Helena Hyvönen, European Journalism Centre, Netherlands - Mexico is now considered to be the most dangerous country in the western hemisphere in which to practice journalism.

by Mira Luna, Shareable, USA - Where national currency is not available because of overall scarcity or there is not enough market value for the work, local currencies can create real, tangible wealth we can see and control. Investing in community currency means investing in your community's health for the long haul, and therefore your own security and happiness.

by Yasemin Ergin, Der Spiegel, Germany - Some 50 years after Germany and Turkey signed a labor agreement, a group of 35 so-called Turkish 'guest workers' embarked on an anniversary train trip to relive their original journey. Following her father's path, writer Yasemin Ergin rode along last week, recording their memories in the first two parts of her series.

by Sophie McBain, New Statesman, UK - Muammar Gaddafi is dead but the women of Libya remain fearful.

by Allison Kilkenny, In These Times, USA - Incredible footage emerged from downtown Oakland last night - not of basic law enforcement efforts to maintain public "health and safety" as the police have been claiming - but of a war zone in which police shot tear gas, bean bags, wooden dowels, flash grenades, and rubber bullets at protesters.

by Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones, USA -The "personhood" amendment on the Mississippi ballot on November 8 doesn't just ban all abortions. It would also likely outlaw several types of birth control and possibly make all forms of hormonal contraception illegal in the state.

by Avesta Choudhary, Tehelka, India - Several NGOs are turning trash into treasure helping protect the environment and empowering many.

by Susan Smartt Cook, Yes!, USA - Review: Ina May Gaskin, the mother of modern midwifery, calls for a return to woman-centered birth culture in her new book.

by Rebecca Leisher, Yes!, USA - A little over a decade ago he was busing Montana senior citizens to Canada to fill their prescriptions at reasonable prices—a way of protesting the American pharmaceutical industry. Now, Montana governor Brian Schweitzer is planning to establish a state-wide universal health care system modeled after that of the state's Canadian neighbor, Saskatchewan.

by Julia Whitty, Mother Jones, USA - A profile of the late Blackfeet woman who successfully sued the federal government for billions on behalf of ripped-off Native Americans.

by Avesta Choudhary & Yamini Deenadayalan, Tehelka, India - Forty-eight hours after her 22-year-old daughter Naina’s death, Malti Singh, 55, managed to lodge a first information report (FIR) at the Vijay Nagar Police Station in Ghaziabad on Monday after Twitter became abuzz with the news of an alleged dowry death being brushed aside by the police.

by Merlind Theile, Der Spiegel, Germany - Berlin's upstart Pirate Party, which sprang to prominence in September, is made up largely of men. Given the party's computer-nerd origins, that may come as no surprise. But critics are unconvinced by its "post-gender" politics and say the party will have to face the demographic dilemma if it wants to grow.

by Sarah van Gelder, Yes!, USA - The #OccupyWallStreet movement is powerful because it is naming the source of the crisis—something that the political establishment had been unwilling to do.

by Naomi Klein, The Nation, USA - If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.

by Kristen Allen, Der Spiegel, Germany - With Greece's next aid payment delayed following the release of dismal economic figures, insolvency is looming. European leaders have promised they won't abandon Athens, but some German commentators on Tuesday suggest that allowing the country to go bust may be the best option.