Articles from the author

Two Nobel Prize award winners, along with six other internationally renowned intellectuals, concluded a tour of Gaza and the Occupied Territories last month. The delegation's visit, organised by the International Parliament of Writers (IPW), was the first such tour.

Two Arab renowned writers are listed on the best 100 books written in the past century. Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz and Sudanese El-Tayeb Saleh's novels are among the "most meaningful books of all time" according to a list released by the Nobel Peace Prize Institute.

The first step towards tackling external challenges is to have the courage to acknowledge and rectify one's own shortcomings before pointing a finger at 'others'.

As the world enters a fragile year of uncertainty, renewed hopes for prosperity and peace abound. The Arab press looks at this with suspicion and criticism, yet hopes for a better tomorrow.

Recent protests over the treatment of Taliban and Al Qaida prisoners being held on Guantanamo island have sparked reaction worldwide. The American administration said that the Geneva Convention cannot be implemented in this case since it does not perceive the detainees as prisoners of war.

The frontiers of American foreign policy have been shaped by numerous figures, none of whom have surpassed the 56th U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, who just turned 80 last month.

Today Saudi society faces the challenge of maintaining its cohesion while surviving the risks of an uncertain future that any change might bring about.

The Arab world has yet to ride the wave of one of the most profound technological phenomena in the history of humankind - the Internet. It has still not grasped in its totality the idea of being empowered by the digital age that thrives on accessibility to information.

"I wish I were still writing poetry for it has always saved me from myself and from the moments of despair that threatened to engulf my very existence. Poetry sparks in me beautiful feelings for life."

The growth of Dubai could perhaps be best exemplified by the fact that it created 413,484 jobs over the past two decades.

Of the total population in the emirate of Dubai in 2000, a total of 65 per cent or 650,077 people are categorised as being in employment, according to the Statistical Yearbook 2000 published by Dubai Municipality.

A new law proposed in the Kuwaiti Parliament (Majlis Al Umma) on the privatisation of public outlets has witnessed stormy discussion and debate there. The following is a closer look at the issue and the debate that ensued.