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

POLITICS: Where Iran Fits in the Mideast Peace Puzzle
Analysis by Helena Cobban*
ANKARA, Turkey (IPS) – What is the relationship between the United States? policy towards Iran and its performance on Arab-Israeli peacemaking, including the crucial quest for peace between Israel and the Palestinians?
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47031

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INDIA-US: Thorny Times Ahead Despite Nuclear Deal
Analysis by Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI (IPS) – Although Manmohan Singh, the man who steered through the landmark Indo-U.S. civilian nuclear deal, has been voted back to power, there is little sign that his second term as prime minister will see the same geniality between the world?s two major democracies.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47027

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LATIN AMERICA: Remittance Drop Will Hurt Poor
By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA (IPS) – The fall in migrant remittances to Latin America caused by the global financial crisis is posing a threat to middle and lower-income households, especially in countries where cash transfers represent a large proportion of GDP.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47032

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US-CANADA: Shared Border, Unilateral Policy?
By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO (IPS) – Canada and the United States are on different wavelengths when it comes to a shared and increasingly hardening of what had been a sleepy border within North America.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47038

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MIDEAST: Gaza Collects So Much Rubbish
By Erin Cunningham
GAZA CITY (IPS) – Suliman Khodari begins his shift at 5am on one of Gaza City’s busiest streets. With his horse-drawn cart, Suliman spends seven hours every morning hauling away the rubbish left by residents and shop owners of the neighbourhood. But he is not a scavenger.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47021

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THAILAND: Courts to Military, ?Deaths in Custody? Are Okay
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
BANGKOK (IPS) – A verdict by a provincial court is poised to deepen the sense of injustice felt by Thailand?s Malay-Muslim minority in the country?s southern provinces, where an insurgency has been raging for over five years.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47050

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YEMEN: Qat Cultivation Draining Water Reserves
By Cam McGrath
SANA’A (IPS) – The tall green shrubs on Yehia Abdullah’s farm in the Haraz mountains produce the bitter-tasting leaves that feed the nation’s number one addiction. More than seven million Yemenis chew qat, the mildly narcotic leaf of the Catha edulis tree. Expanding cultivation of qat to meet growing national demand is rapidly depleting Yemen’s limited groundwater resources, experts warn.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47016

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ECONOMY: ?Africa Should Seize Control Over its Development?
By Annelise Sander
GENEVA (IPS) – Colonisation can be blamed for Africa?s underdevelopment but today Africans must take their fate in their own hands and become ambitious. The continent badly needs industrialisation but it has fallen back into the trap of merely exporting commodities because of booming prices.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47022

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TRADE: ?You Can?t Smoke Cigars in Brussels and Bulldoze Us?
By Servaas van den Bosch
WINDHOEK (IPS) – Namibia will sign an economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU) when the outstanding contentious issues have been resolved through new wording in the texts of the interim EPA, says the country?s trade and industry minister Hage Geingob.
ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47047

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ENVIRONMENT: Preserve Peru?s Biodiversity, Save the World
By Milagros Salazar*
LIMA (Tierramérica) – Peru, second in Latin America for total area of tropical forests, has adopted international laws, instruments and strategies to protect its wealth of flora and fauna. But those tools have not yet had much effect.
www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=46972

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