SUNDARBANS, India, Jan 08 (IPS) - When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks through the netting of a coop and two-dozen shiny hens rush forward for lunch.

PARIS, Jan 08 (IPS) - "They are cowards who react to satire by going for their Kalashnikovs." That was how renowned French cartoonist Plantu described the killers of 10 media workers and two policemen in Paris Wednesday.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 07 (IPS) - The controversial low-brow Hollywood comedy, 'The Interview', portrays the story of two U.S. talk-show journalists on assignment to interview Kim Jong-un - and midway down the road are recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to poison the North Korean leader.

NAGAPATNAM, India, Jan 07 (IPS) - Standing amidst his lush green paddy fields in Nagapatnam, a coastal district in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a farmer named Ramajayam remembers how a single wave changed his entire life.

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 07 (IPS) - The world's 48 Least Developed Countries (LDCs) - a special category of developing nations created by the General Assembly in 1971 but refused recognition by the World Bank - have long been described as "poorest of the poor" in need of special international assistance for their economic survival.

WASHINGTON, Jan 06 (IPS) - This year, Arab political Islam will be greatly influenced by U.S. regional policy, as it has been since the Obama administration came into office six years ago. Indeed, as the U.S. standing in the region rose with Obama's presidency beginning in January 2009, so did the fortunes of Arab political Islam.

COLOMBO, Jan 06 (IPS) - As 14.5 million Sri Lankans prepare to select their next leader, there is growing fear that violence could mar the Jan. 8 elections, billed as the closet electoral contest in the island's history.

MUMBAI, Jan 06 (IPS) - Watching Bittal Devi deftly weave threads of different colours into a vibrant patchwork quilt, it's hard to imagine that this 46-year-old's hands have spent the better part of their life cleaning toilets.

WHITE PLAINS, New York, Jan 06 (IPS) - I grew up in Hickory Hill, my family's home in Virginia which was often filled with veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. 

WASHINGTON, Jan 05 (IPS) - For a moment, four years ago, it seemed that dictators in the Middle East would soon be a thing of the past.