by Galina Stolyarova, Transitions Online, Czech Republic - For too many Russians who get sick, a piece of paper will decide their fate.According to the nongovernmental Russian League for the Protection of Patients, every year more than 50,000 people die and many more become disabled as a result of sub-par medical help. Even state-employed experts, including the country’s chief lung specialist, Alexander Chuchalin, admit the country’s health-care system is in trouble and that on average every third diagnosis is wrong.

by Amy Goodman, Truthdig, USA - The ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States should serve as a moment to reflect on tolerance.

by Jan Anton Hough, Consultancy Africa Intelligence, South Africa - Current initiatives to mitigate global warming such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD projects), vulnerable local communities in Africa that depend on such forests, might face a renewed form of marginalisation.

by Tamar Sharabi, Upside Down World, Canada - It is estimated that one third of the best agricultural lands in Honduras are owned by one percent of the country’s producers.3 Meanwhile, 67 of every 100 persons in Honduras live in extreme poverty, without the ability to generate sufficient income even for the basic food staples.

by Kelly Knaub, Havana Times, Cuba - For the moment people are afraid to propose solutions, and that’s the main problem. This is the encumbrance, and this is what limits the country’s evolution.

By Linda Slattery and Ann Talbot , World Socialist Web Site, USA - Tensions began to emerge between President Paul Kagame and his Western backers in the course of the recent elections. Media reports criticised the exclusion of opposition parties from the poll and physical attacks on Kagame’s opponents. Kagame has received extraordinarily high levels of aid from the West since he came to power in 1994 and has previously been virtually immune from criticism in the press. The shift in attitude can best be traced to the welcome that Kagame has extended to China’s growing investment in Africa

by Cynthia Cockburn, 50.50 inclusive democracy, UK - The to-ing and fro-ing about ‘women’s peaceful natures’ is no more than an excitable bubble of argument out of touch with facts on the ground. Antiwar feminism is a pretty holistic feminism that is forged in the crucible of war.

by Elyssa Pachico, Colombia Reports, Colombia - Caucasia is the kind of backwater we’d like to pretend doesn’t exist. It is too hot for puffy-eyed women to do much except sit by the road, selling limp pieces of mango stuffed into plastic cups.It is a miserable, poor, and ugly place, utterly unimportant except for the fact that the highway passes through here towards the Caribbean coast, and it is only a few hours away from Medellin, and only a few hours away from the coca cultivations in the east. Controlling Caucasia means controlling Antioquia’s drug trade.

by Heather McRobie, Open Democracy, UK - At a time when other regional ties with Israel are facing setbacks, US and Israeli moves to prevent Jordan from enriching its own uranium may be misguided when Jordan can play positive role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

by Sylvie Tertzakian, Asbarez Armenian News, USA - Last week, while undergoing a routine check up at a doctor’s office, it hit home that one of the routine questions that doctors’ offices ask is: family history. For many years, I had not paid attention to the family history section. However, this time around, when the doctor asked the questions, I realized that I had a very limited knowledge about my family medical history. I told my doctor, that my family’s past medical history stops with my maternal grandparents. The rest doesn’t exist, since everyone else had perished in the Armenian Genocide. Since it was Genocide, and not a murder, where would one find my family’s bones, and how could one proceed with DNA testing, to research the family medical history?

by Aida Alic, Balkan Investigative Report Network, Bosnia and Herzegovina - Asima Memic’s son, Asmir, boarded a bus from Prijedor to Travniik as part of an exchange in July 1992. He never arrived, and only a single limb has ever been recovered.

by Eva Bartlett, Counter Currents, India - Ramadan, a month of fasting, is also a time of joy for Muslims. Yet this is one of the hardest Ramadans Abu Fouad's family has faced.

by Sara Shahriari, Indian Country Today, USA - Living in pockets alongside, and increasingly mixing with, the Aymara and Quechua Indians who make up the majority of the country’s 10.5 million people is a small, often overlooked population. They are Afro-Bolivians, who have shared in many of the indigenous population’s trials over hundreds of years.

by Felicity Duncan, Money Web, South Africa - You've probably heard about how China has managed, over the last twenty years or so, to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. According to the World Bank, between 1981 and 2005, around 600m Chinese vaulted over the poverty line, that is, raised their incomes above $2 a day.There's been a lot of debate about exactly how China managed to achieve its impressive results, and whether or not the Chinese example offers a model for other nations trying to get people out of poverty.

by Mariana Fonseca Pires de Mello, Comunidad Segura, Brazil - In Brazil, and elsewhere in the world, girls are playing an increasingly prominent role in gangs, participating in a more daring, conspicuous and active way.

by Honor Mahony, EU Observer, Belgium - French President Nicolas Sarkozy's drive to expel illegal Roma from the country has provoked criticism from the Roma themselves and a backlash from within the ranks of his own centre-right party.

by Elena Shore, New America Media, USA - An FBI report obtained by the Associated Press found that the four big U.S. cities with the lowest rates of violent crime are all along the border: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin.

by Michelle Chen, Colorlines, USA - The latest research adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that an array of social and environmental factors may be causing girls’ bodies to develop prematurely.

by Perry Santanachote , Mizzima, India - The regime’s biggest threat for the past half-century, besides Aung San Suu Kyi, has been rebel armies from various ethnic groups. For decades the regime has worked to increase its presence in these rural areas by building paramilitary allies in hostile regions. The local militias suppress rebel activities in exchange for the freedom to produce and transport drugs with full military co-operation. As the military brokered more deals, its obsession with power quickly took precedence over its war on drugs. Now the regime is more powerful than ever, due to a survival strategy that is largely subsidised by Burma’s multi-billion-dollar drug trade.

by Tessa Thorniley, Danwei, China - Multi-billion dollar resource and infrastructure deals between China and African countries make the business headlines ever more regularly, but there are very few reports on the growing numbers of Chinese entrepreneurs and small private companies seeking opportunities in Africa that they cannot find in China.

by Ayo Ademiluyi, Pambazuka News, Kenya - As a result of corruption, over 80 per cent of the oil wealth went into the private purses of less than one per cent of the population.

by Meghan L. O'Sullivan, Council on Foreign Relations, USA - While the sanctions wisely couple punitive measures with a desire for "robust dialogue, there are serious questions about whether Tehran will see them as a serious threat to regime stability and change course.

by Svetlana Kononova, Russia Profile, Russia - The heat wave and air pollution due to forest and peat fires have hit Russia’s economy, had an impact on people’s health and are making working conditions unbearable in many offices. A recent poll conducted by a research center at the SuperJob.ru recruiting portal found that 65 percent of Muscovites said their ability and capacity to work has decreased because of the heat. Numerous respondents said: “I feel tired and cannot work efficiently,” or “it’s very hard to work now, I always want to sleep,” and “it’s very difficult to concentrate.”

by Anne Bartlett, Sudan Tribune, France - Darfur is seen either as an epiphenomenon of the larger problem of Sudan and the South, or as a potential money/power making enterprise for corrupt individuals and governments.

by Valentina Pop, EU Observer, Belgium - Instead of focusing on integrating the Roma minority, the ruling centre-right party has engaged in a "demagogic, aggressive and stigmatising discussion."

by Karen J. Coates, GlobalPost, USA -.The International Convention on Cluster Munitions, prohibiting all use, stockpiling, production and transfer of such weapons, comes into effect on Aug. 1. Villagers in Laos, meantime, continue to find creative ways to use scrap metal from these deadly munitions as part of their everyday lives.

by Marjorie Cohn, Common Dreams, USA - Bush’s war of choice in Iraq has caused 4,413 American deaths. Iraq Body Count estimates that between 97,110 and 105,956 Iraqi civilians have been killed. Untold numbers have been seriously wounded. By September, we will have spent nearly $750 billion on this war and occupation.

by Gaelle Bausson, UNICEF, Niger - A child is given a slice of mango and is asked to commit murder in return. Another admits to killing 800 people while flying with other witches on a piece of tree bark. The ‘confessions’ are dangerous and highly revealing.

by Emily Schmall, Daily Finance, USA - Models in white dresses of tattered lace in photographs released in June appear to be the ghosts of the city's female victims and the opal nail polish reflects the grim factories people in the city's outskirts are bussed to in the early dawn.

by Ruth Messinger, Change.org, USA - It appears that Haiti's "15 minutes of fame" are up. With few exceptions, the journalists who flooded the zone following the earthquake are nowhere to be seen. And the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee's harsh criticism of the rebuilding effort six months after the earthquake is a sign that patience is wearing thin. Meanwhile, the lives of Haitians on the ground are still appalling — over a million in tent cities and squatter villages, rain flooding their streets, rape on the rise, too many basic services not restored.

by Marianne Barriaux, Independent Online, South Africa - For Ruzmammat, the Internet is a crucial way of keeping in touch with his Uighur friends in China's Xinjiang region - a lifeline that was denied to him for 10 months following deadly ethnic riots.Authorities cut off the web in Xinjiang in the aftermath of violence that erupted a year ago. Three major portals used by Uighurs for news and discussion remain blocked - a reality which is hindering efforts by members of the Turkic-speaking minority to preserve their culture, experts say.

by Leila Kadoor-Boudadi Trans by Chigba Njokanma, Afrik-News, France- The attack on two restaurants showing the football World Cup final followed the militant extremist group’s declaration of war on Uganda and Burundi in light of the two Eastern African countries’ military engagement in Somalia.

by Susanne Guesten, Deutsche Welle, Germany - Only one in five Turkish women work - down from one in three in the 1980s. Female university graduates and professional women have also withdrawn from the Turkish labor market over the past couple of decades - a trend the World Bank has dubbed "a puzzle." Neslihan Akbulut, a 27-year-old Turkish sociologist, sees nothing puzzling about it.

by Jessica Horn and Jenny Morgan, Open Democracy, UK - A growing movement of African Christians are making waves at home and abroad with their ultra conservative interpretations of scripture. Far from a naïve embrace of conventional norms or a faithful embrace of scripture, these interpretations are emerging as clear political choices and are undermining women's rights struggles across the African continent.

by Rachel McCarthy, The Angle, Australia - The of Australia recently stopped asylum applications from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. Their reasoning for freezing the asylum applications of Afghans due to an apparent increase in stability and improved human rights is unfounded.

by Cynthia Stephen, Info Change India, India - The inclusion of caste as a classification in the ongoing census has been the subject of much debate recently. While many believe that it should have been included in the census questionnaire, others stoutly oppose it on the grounds that it will reinforce the casteist mindset and cause friction in society. Why does it matter if castes are included and why is it so controversial?

by Jina Krause-Vilmar, Huffington Post, USA - Food is scarce in Ethiopia, where most of the population lives in rural, drought-prone areas in a state of chronic poverty. In 2010, the Government of Ethiopia identified 5.2 million people in need of emergency food aid. Not surprisingly, this hunger crisis also impacts the thousands of refugees living just within Ethiopia's borders.

by Imane Belhaj, Magharebia, Morocco/USA - Despite Islamist hostility and a restrictive legal climate, homosexuals in Morocco are publishing a magazine that covers issues in their community and beyond.

by Camilla French, Al Jazeera.net, Qatar - The Muqam, a traditional form of Uighur music, are large-scale pieces consisting of instrumental sections, sung poetry, stories and dance.

by Alice Trudelle, Warsaw Business Journal, Poland - Poland isn't ready to let go of its taboos to seize gay business opportunities. Both Polish businesses and the city of Warsaw are missing out on an important opportunity for profit and PR by not getting more involved in the EuroPride 2010.

by Criselda Yabes, Asia Sentinel, Hong Kong - There has been a heightened sense of anticipation as Aquino sets about selecting his advisers and key officials, making it clear that he would undo Arroyo's 200 midnight appointments in the waning days of her administration. He has already engineered the departure of the powerful Armed Forces chief of staff. Gen. Delfin Bangit, Arroyo's chief of the presidential guards, who was regarded as having been rewarded with the top military post for his loyalty rather than merit. When Aquino announced that he would not let him stay on the job, Bangit had no choice but to step down a year ahead of his mandatory retirement.

by Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches, USA - On matters of faith, why do the Democrats opt for evangelicals over their progressive allies?

by Sara Mojtehedzadeh, openDemocracy 50.50, UK – G20 countries are asking why rich nations should continue to direct the form and substance of development programmes when many health innovations now originate in the developing world.

by Naomi Klein, Common Dreams, USA - When the G20 met in the London in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis, the leaders failed to band together to regulate the financial sector so that this type of crisis would never happen again.

by Chi Mgbako, Pambazuka, Kenya - A global conversation about the rights of sex workers is happening without African voices. While activists on other continents have successfully organised to engage governments in dialogue, the criminalisation of the trade in Africa has pushed sex workers to the fringe, compromising more than economic protection in the industry as health, safety and legal rights are sidelined.

by Nora Nimani Musa, Balkan Insight, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Only six people are officially registered as autistic in Kosovo and receiving some help. Out there, another 16,000 may be suffering in isolation from the same cruel disorder.

by Tamar Zmora, Ynet, Israel - Some 350 Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian children get together in annual one-day event. 'The mixed game gave me a feeling that we can begin to make peace and enjoy life through football,' one of participants says.

by Madeleine Reeves, openDemocracy Russia, UK - Media talk of ‘ethnic conflict’ in Kyrgyzstan is misleading, in that it takes ethnicity to be causal. This does not describe the complex, messy process – political, economic, social and structural – whereby this crisis has become ethnicised.

by Valentina Pop, EU Observer, Belgium - The economic downturn has led to a rise in discrimination, racism and xenophobia in Europe, particularly in EU countries such as Italy, Slovakia and Hungary, the latest Amnesty International report on human rights shows.

by Audrey Mbugua, Pambazuka, Kenya - Religious fundamentalism in Kenya has played a central role in the orchestration of gross human rights abuses against transsexuals and other minorities.