News stories by Sanjay Suri

, Aug 13 (IPS) - What after 2014? That is the question people on Afghanistan's streets are asking as the deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops draws near.

HYDERABAD, India, Dic 01 (IPS) - Thirty-year old Swapna Raj of Hyderabad is a woman in a hurry: in time for the International AIDS day Swapna, a HIV positive person on anti-retroviral therapy (ART), has received a contract from the state government to deliver 5,000 red ribbons.

LONDON, Oct 24 (IPS) - Less than two weeks after being left for dead by the Taliban, Malala Yousafzai is standing up on her own two feet.

BEIRUT, Oct 21 (IPS) - The assassination of Lebanon’s top security official on Friday not only ravaged a quiet Beirut neighbourhood but also shattered the precarious sense of security many Lebanese have been desperately clinging to in recent months.

GAZA CITY, Oct 21 (IPS) - It’s being taken as an antidote to the stresses of Occupation. But the prevalence of the painkiller Tramadol in the Gaza Strip has more to do with its ease of availability than its singular effectiveness as a reality-numbing substance.

BE’ER SHEVA, Israel, Oct 09 (IPS) - As the political science department at a major Israeli university has been threatened with closure in the 2013 school year, professors and students say the move reflects the politicisation of Israeli academia,and threatens basic freedoms.

Campaigners from around the world have called upon the Arab League and on the African Commission on Human and People's Rights to explore the possibility of adopting regional protocols to abolish the death penalty.

The image endures of the death penalty in force across the Arab world because it is considered somehow Islamic, and because most regimes are undeniably autocratic. But campaigners on the ground say the death penalty might just be in place because the people want it. Which would make it in essence a democratic institution.

Islamic regimes look for provisions and precedents to carry out the death sentence in the name of Islam. But, says Dr. Mohammad Al-Habash, director of the Islamic Studies Centre in Damascus, they are not looking enough at 13 provisions within the Quran to commute the death sentence to a lesser punishment.

Women entrepreneurs and workers will soon help Bangladesh shake off the Least Developed Country (LDC) label, business leaders say.