QAMISHLI, Sep 17 (IPS) - Over a yellowish map, Qehreman Meri draws an oblong surface along the Turkish-Syrian border. "We want an autonomous region with clearly defined boundaries," says this spokesman from Yeketi (Unity), one of 15 Kurdish political parties in Syria.

RAS EL-AMOUD, Occupied East Jerusalem, Sep 17 (IPS) - Filistin Hamdallah looks disoriented, walking without purpose amidst the furniture strewn in the courtyard, as if she was moving home. Only the fresh laundry hanging on wires indicates that the Palestinian family is here to stay, to stay in conditions with Jewish neighbours that show just how difficult the divisions in Jerusalem can be.

JAKARTA, Sep 17 (IPS) - Indonesia suffers from a malaise: an appalling lack of infrastructure which makes a mandarin orange that travels thousands of miles from Argentina cost nearly the same as another picked locally.

BANGKOK, Sep 16 (IPS) - Thailand’s flood-management blueprint  received a jolt when the dykes in Sukhothai were breached by the rain-swollen Yom river last week, submerging large stretches of the former royal capital.

SRINAGAR, India, Sep 16 (IPS) - Rashid was 12 years old when he picked up a gun and received armed training in Pakistan. He was caught by the Indian forces in 1992 and sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. Five years later when he wished to return to a normal life, everyone turned away from him.

CAIRO, Sep 16 (IPS) - When Egypt's army was deployed to restore order in the streets during the uprising that ended president Hosni Mubarak's rule, Egyptians greeted the troops as saviours. But by the time the generals handed the country over to a civilian president in June this year, many Egyptians regarded the 16 months of transitional military rule as more oppressive than the 29 years under Mubarak.

JEJU, South Korea, Sep 15 (IPS) - The Red River Giant softshell turtle (Rafetus swinhoei) is the stuff of legend in Vietnam. The fabled turtle in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake is popularly known by the name Kim Qui or Golden Turtle God, and it made its first historical appearance in 250 BC.

PRAGUE, Sep 15 (IPS) - The Czech foreign ministry has insisted the country’s support for human rights is “not for sale” after calls from the prime minister to drop “fashionable political causes” such as supporting the Dalia Lama and the jailed Russian pop group Pussy Riot.

CHIKHWAWA, Malawi, Sep 15 (IPS) - Three-month-old Simplicious Gift lives in Mafunga village in Malawi’s southern rural district of Chikhwawa, 48 kilometres from the commercial capital, Blantyre. His is a poor farming village of about 1,200 people who live off their harvests and the produce from their livestock of goats, pigs and cows.

KHARTOUM, Sep 15 (IPS) - In Sudan’s newspaper district in Khartoum East, dozens of people sit beneath the trees sipping tea or reading newspapers. Most are journalists who once worked for the 10 newspapers that were either forced closed by the country’s security services or because of economic constraints that resulted after the government raised printing taxes in an attempt to prevent the media from reporting on anti-government demonstrations.