by Daisy Sindelar, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - The cold-weather deaths in Ukraine -- higher than in Russia, Poland, or anywhere else in Europe -- have focused attention on the plight of the homeless, who continue to suffer from Soviet-era stigmas that equated them with drug addicts, criminals, and "antisocial elements."

by Najla Dari, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Perhaps the greatest affront is that the new directive does not come from religious authorities or fundamentalists. Instead, it comes from a commission presided over by Iraq's minister for women's affairs.

by Maike Winters, Radio Netherlands, Netherlands - An unusual experiment is due to start in February in the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in the Dutch town of Dordrecht. Patients who do not want to be reanimated will be given red wristbands.

by Golnaz Esfandiari, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - The wave of arrests ahead of the March 2 parliamentary elections appears to signal attempts by the Iranian establishment to prevent any form of dissent. The March parliamentary elections -- the first since the disputed 2009 presidential vote that led to mass street protests and threw the Iranian establishment into crisis -- are coming at a sensitive time.

by Jannie Schipper, Radio Netherlands, Netherlands - Is the United Nations responsible for the mass murders that took place in Srebrenica and Rwanda? Or are the national UN peacekeepers who were deployed there accountable?

by Maureen Corrigan, NPR, USA - As he surely intended, Shalom Auslander opens up a whole big can of slimy moral and aesthetic dilemmas in his debut novel Hope: A Tragedy. Maybe plunking Anne Frank down in your novel — as, by the way, Philip Roth did in The Ghost Writer and, later, in Exit, Ghost — is excusable if there's a big enough point and if your writing is strong enough to carry it off. Maybe artistically appropriating Anne Frank — herself a brilliantly observant artist of her own tragic predicament — is not as creepy as dressing your child up to look like a little girl who, like Frank, was murdered. And maybe I have a headache because Auslander clearly wants to lampoon identity politics, as well as the acutely understandable Jewish sense of victimization, by sending up Anne Frank, aka, as she says here, "Miss Holocaust, 1945."

by Marjolein Stoop, Radio Netherlands, The Netherlands - Every week, young designers and grannies get together in a room in Laurens, a nursing home in Rotterdam. In exchange for a cup of tea, a piece of cake and some company, they discuss designs and knit.

by Marija Arnautovic, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Jolie said she had often been bothered by the lack of assistance for war victims -- particularly women -- that she has seen around the world during her travels as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations’ refugee agency, the UNHCR.

by Farangis Najibullah, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - In some parts of Central Asia, "alternative" doesn't necessarily mean clean burning or eco-friendly. In Uzbekistan, cheap is the operative word, and that means things can get downright, well, earthy.

by Maike Winters, Radio Netherlands, The Netherlands - Constructing water systems in a village in Ghana, training courses for South African farmers, better education in a little school in Kenya. These aren’t the first things you think of when talking about the Dutch supermarket giant Albert Heijn. But they’re part and parcel of it, says the supermarket chain.

by Kristin Deasy, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - An Egyptian blogger who sparked controversy last week by posting a photo of herself naked online has also launched a campaign calling on men to don the Islamic headscarf.

by Kudashkina Ekaterina, Voice of Russia, Russia - Interview with Jonathan Birdwell, senior researcher on violence and extremism program at DEMOS, which is a UK Think Tank focusing on power and politics.

by Kristin Deasy, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - The controversy illustrates an ongoing debate about the direction of the Internet: Will it be a medium where users' online identities must be the same as their legal names? Or will the culture of anonymity that has been prevalent until now continue to dominate?

by Lucia Walton, World Radio Switzerland, Switzerland - With the United Nations advising the world on how to save resources they’ve also been trying to lead by example in their own backyard in Geneva. In a bid to save energy and money, two ecological programmes are running side by side. One uses water from Lake Geneva to cool the UN’s many offices and the other relies on a flock of sheep to graze some of the thousands of square metres of grassland at the site.

by Dheera Sujan, South Asia Wired, Netherlands - The industry was producing more than a hundred films a year, until general Zia ul-Haq imposed an Islamic military dictatorship in the country; culture and the arts were amongst the first victims. And when the film industry shut down, so did the orchestras who’d provided the thrilling soundtracks.

by Jill Lepore, NPR, USA - The first birth control clinic in the United States opened in 1916. It was operated by Margaret Sanger, who started the clinic after becoming outraged that she couldn't give her patients — poor women in the tenements on New York City's Lower East Side — information about contraceptive options.

by Imogen Foulkes, World Radio Switzerland, Swizerland - Although it’s an awkward leap of faith to believe that beautiful young women protesting topless can advance women’s causes, they are getting lots of media attention.

by Gayatri Parameswaran, Radio Netherlands, Netherlands - Tribal people are being pushed off their forest land because the government leases out forest areas for development projects. One of the major demands of the ‘adivasi parliament’ is access to forest land and minor forest produce, which would let them continue to live as they have for centuries.

by Devi Boerema, Radio Netherlands, Netherlands - Every two years the leaders of the Commonwealth countries meet to discuss issues of common interest. In recent years the discussion has focused increasingly on the future of the institution itself. Are the values the commonwealth is founded on still intact?

by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now, USA - The U.N. Security Council is set to vote on a resolution calling on Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to immediately step down after 33 years in power.

by Golnaz Esfandiari, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, made clear that in his eyes fun was not compatible with Islam. Authorities have since worked hard to banish laughter, playfulness, or other such behavior from public life through warnings, but also through punishments.

by Daisy Sindelar, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - As ties between the United States and Pakistan continue to sour, speculation is mounting that Uzbekistan may become a new ally of convenience in the U.S. war on terror

by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, USA - The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles announced it rejected clemency for Troy Anthony Davis.

by Dheera Sujan, South Asia Wired, Netherlands - Shirin’s journey provides us with one inspirational thought: that while some of us can be broken by life’s tragedies and others can choose to feel victimized by them, some of us – the best of us – can go through that fire, and come out if not undamaged, then at least forged into a stronger, nobler metal that we were made of before.

by Zoe Sullivan, Making Contact, USA - Communities across the country have embraced locally-grown food, fuel-efficient cars and other forms of environmentalism. While African-Americans haven’t been on widely credited, they are amongst the vanguard creating positive change.

by Tina Jelin, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Population experts say that the world is facing enormous challenges in feeding and housing its human inhabitants as birthrates and life expectancy continue to rise. The global population is expected to reach a staggering 9.3 billion by 2050, with 97 percent of the growth in less developed regions.

by Frieda Werden, WINGS, Canada - In December 2007, lethal ethnic violence broke out in Kenya, sparked by allegations of election fraud. After two months, a temporary power-sharing structure was put in place. Kenyan business ethics professor Dr. Rose Omondi Kisia describes the new constitution and radically changed government structure that have emerged from the coalition years, and how this could affect aspiring women politicians like herself in August 2012.

by Elahe Ravanshad, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Many authoritarian regimes censor books for political reasons. But Iran goes so far in also tampering with books for self-claimed religious reasons that the Islamic republic's censors form a league of their own.

by Frieda Werden, WINGS, Canada - Emet Degirmenci is a Turkish women-and- development scholar and international permaculture designer. At Women's Worlds 2011 she tells Frieda Werden how ecological renewal can be based on old ways, and describes her Innermost Gardens project with both indigenous and refugee women in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

by Farangis Najibullah, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Should animal rights trump religious freedom? Muslim and Jewish religious communities in the Netherlands are about to find out.

by Heather Maher, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - As European countries grapple with how -- and in some cases, whether -- to exploit their own natural-gas deposits, the U.S. experience with the relatively new technique of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking" -- the controversial but effective method of extracting gas from rock buried a kilometer or more underground -- is being watched carefully.

by Myrtille van Bommel, Radio Netherlands, The Netherlands - The Netherlands is to be the first European country to guarantee open and free access to the internet. In future, telecom operators will no longer be allowed to charge extra for internet services like Skype and YouTube.

by Nicole della Pietra, Swiss Info, Switzerland - “This type of meeting, between powerful global players, is contrary to our principles of sovereignty,” he said. “What’s more, they don’t publish the costs for the taxpayer.”

by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, USA - "Where violent suppression of drug activity increases, so does killings and violence related to drug use."

by Clea Caulcutt, RFI, France - In France, the Paris authorities are pushing to improve access for disabled people to nightclubs and bars from which they are often excluded. Last week, volunteers searched the town for nightclubs and bars accessible for disabled clients. Paris was rated 17th in a recent survey on accessibility in France, far behind towns like Nantes and Grenoble.

by Anes Alic, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - It would be interesting to see a list of those individuals and institutions that helped him evade arrest for 16 years. So far, the results of that investigation have shown that Mladic enjoyed the protection of certain elements of the Serbian security services, the army, and politicians.

by Adrienne Francis, ABC, Australia - Australia is under pressure to toughen its stance on the use of cluster bombs. Despite supporting a ban on them, a loophole in the legislation allows Australian soldiers to fight alongside nations which still allow the use of the weapons.

by Kristin Deasy, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - A quarter of a century ago, 14-year-old Natalia Churikova was frolicking on the streets of Kyiv the day after the Chornobyl disaster, unaware that every breath of fresh spring air she inhaled contained harmful radiation.

by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR, USA - For the first time in Egyptian history, a woman is running for president.

Buthayna Kamel's candidacy in elections expected later this year is the result of the youth uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak and his ruling party.

Still, many Egyptian women say they feel shut out of the new government that is emerging. They worry that unless they take bold steps, women will end up with less political clout in the new Egypt than they had under Mubarak.

by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - OSCE agreements are nonbinding, and its leverage mainly moral. But is it too much to ask that it avoid turning its leadership over to countries that do not abide by basic human rights?

by Margo de Haas, Radio Netherlands, Netherlands - The Dutch Lower House wants to introduce a ban on unanaesthetised ritual slaughter. A majority supports the proposal of the Animal Rights Party, which would make kosher and halal slaughter things of the past.

by Sue Supriano, Frieda Werden, WINGS, Canada - Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water explains the growing shortages of usable fresh water in the world and how a few corporations are being helped by the World Bank and IMF to control what's left. Struggles of desperate people have had some success against the privatizers, but our practices towards water must change.

by Alison Hird, Radio France Internationale, France - The 'Move for Life' mobile exhibition at ArtParis aims to fight poverty, racism, AIDS and violence by showing works of art by famous international artists on the side of truck.

by Jae Wan Noh, Radio Free Asia, USA - North Korean women crossing into China as defectors are frequently preyed on by trafficking gangs, with some targeted for abduction before they even leave their homes, according to sources in the region.

by Claire Bigg, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Many Russians see the new police law and the interactive website as steps in the right direction. But like Petrov and Murashev, most doubt the reform will put an end to the police's near-total impunity and make its officers more accountable.

by Sarah Dingle, ABC Radio, Australia - The request claims that during the last days of Sri Lanka's civil war, dual Sri Lankan-Australian citizen Dr Palitha Kohona was involved in the murder of three Tamil Tiger leaders who had already surrendered.

by Linda Mottram, ABC Radio Australia, Australia - There's continuing evidence of an increased rate of Fijians seeking to stay in Australia as refugees, as the country's political freedoms and its economy languish under dictatorship.

by Kellia Ramares, Wings, Canada - Localization can repair the economic and social wreckage wrought by globalization and bring greater happiness, through community. So say sages and activists on six continents, in a new film. In this interview, Helena Norberg-Hodge explains her film, The Economics of Happiness.

by Jo Fahy, World Radio Switzerland, Switzerland - How to make chemistry cool for kids, so that some of them decide to make it a career? The International Year of Chemistry aims to promote the science by highlighting the surprises and discoveries that can unfold from studying it.

by Rebecca Hamilton, NPR, USA - The Obama administration has come dangerously close to perpetuating Khartoum's propaganda.