Here are some of IPS’s most-read stories of the past week — and stories you shouldn’t go without reading:

ENVIRONMENT: Israel Stripping West Bank Quarries
By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH (IPS) – Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din is taking the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), the Israeli civil administration and a number of Israeli mining companies to court.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46682

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SRI LANKA: Media Kept on Tight Leash
By IPS Correspondents
COLOMBO (IPS) – As the latest round of Asia’s longest-running guerrilla war winds down, scores of journalists here are experiencing intimidation and harassment for being critical of the military campaign against the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46662

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ECONOMY-US: Workers Win and Lose in Chrysler Retooling
By Adrianne Appel
BOSTON (IPS) – The U.S. government will invest billions in Chrysler and the United Auto Workers (UAW) trade union will become majority owners of the company, in a financial rescue deal announced Thursday by the White House.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46695

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RIGHTS: Kenya Cannot Fail to Prosecute Extra-Judicial Killings
By Joyce Mulama
NAIROBI (IPS) – When stock is taken of the Kenyan coalition government?s first year in office no marks will be awarded to its handling of extra-judicial killings in the country. Human rights activists claim that the police have murdered about 500 people in the past 16 months.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46636

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NICARAGUA: Literacy Campaign Changing Women’s Lives
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA (IPS) – Lorena Castillo was 10 years old when she was told that her lot in life was to become a good homemaker and a devoted wife and mother. But she would learn none of that at school, her father said when she asked to be allowed to go with her brothers to the school in her rural Nicaraguan village.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46639

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POLITICS: China Pulling Southeast Asia into Its Orbit
By Antoaneta Bezlova – Newsmekong*
BEIJING (IPS) – The global financial crisis is proving a boon for a resurgent China, which is poised to exert ever greater influence in Southeast Asia.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46696

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MIDEAST: Tunnels Become a Lifeline
By Erin Cunningham
RAFAH (IPS) – Pick-up trucks speed westward on the Barth highway that flanks the Israeli border in Egypt’s North Sinai region, stacked high with cartons of petrol. They are headed “for Gaza”, the Bedouin residents of Barth village say – through the tunnels that burrow under the Egypt-Gaza border and are filling Gaza’s aid gap in the aftermath of Israel’s deadly assault on the territory.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46661

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CLIMATE CHANGE: Burden Lies with Rich Polluters, Native People Say
By Stephen Leahy
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (IPS) – Already suffering significant impacts from climate change, indigenous peoples at the close of an international summit here rejected the concept of carbon trading and offsets. Many also called for a moratorium on all new oil and gas exploration in their traditional territories and the eventual phase-out of fossil fuels.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46634

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MAY DAY-ARGENTINA: ‘My Mom Is a Taxi Driver’
By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES (IPS) – A new collection of children’s books in Argentina shows women in jobs and professions that are traditionally held by men, challenging sexist preconceptions.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46683

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