In 2010, white women in the U.S. only earned 80.5 percent as much as white men, according to U.S. Current Population Survey and the National Committee on Pay Equity. There has been some improvement over the years. In 2000, for example, white women’s earnings were 72.2 percent of those of white men. However, the wage gap has been decreasing by a slower rate for black and Hispanic women, who in 2010 earned 69.6 percent and 59.8 percent respectively, as compared to 64.6 percent and 52.8 percent in 2000.

The winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006, Orhan Pamuk, has been loved and hated, applauded and booed. He has had his works read and burnt. He has had his life celebrated and threatened.

In his first feature film Reprise , Norwegian director Joachim Trier tells a story of two friends, Erik and Philip, who write and publish their first novel. The film opens with the two men, manuscripts in hand, facing each other in front of a mailbox on a street in Oslo. Both are contemplating the submission of their novels. Anxious about rejection, or worse, acceptance, Erik and Philip hesitate to drop the parcels containing their work into the mailbox. Ultimately, the two send off their hopeful additions to the Norwegian literary cannon.

With daily prayers after sunset, dark quietness rises in the streets of Pakistan. Not because people have to finish their work and prepare for another frantic day as in the United States, but because it is time for two to three hours of drama serials that have just risen from the ruins.

As international anger rises over reports of mass carnage at the hands of the Syrian regime, a U.N. Security Council draft resolution condemning Syria failed to be adopted on Saturday after veto-wielding members Russia and China voted against it. Ambassadors from the other permanent members of the council—the United States, France, and the United Kingdom—said they were furious at Russia and China for failing to halt the worsening bloody violence that has consumed the Middle Eastern nation.

By early 2003, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom claimed that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. This posed a threat to international security and gave rise to the possibility of Iraq employing these weapons against other countries. To prevent this, the U. S. military invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003, with the mission “to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, to end Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and to free the Iraqi people.” Almost nine years later, on Dec. 15, 2011, the American military formally ended its mission in Iraq, lauding itself for establishing democracy; unfortunately, this democracy turned out to be relatively unstable.

Today, almost a year after Egypt’s uprisings that led to the resignation of the president, Hosni Mubarak, and inspired mass protests in other parts of the Arab world, the revolution is still incomplete: the power remains in the hands of the military, which is increasingly seen by Egyptian people as a new oppressor. But does incompleteness necessarily mean a failure?

Iran’s nuclear power pot has been burning whoever touches it. Israeli newspapers have been writing stories about a future in which the nuclear war conspiracies become true. Israeli military leaders have been promising that any imminent threat against Israel will be eliminated. There are the endless interpretations of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports. Iran is suspected of having one of its pawns too close to the opponent’s end of the chessboard. Iran planning to turn its pawn, the sites of nuclear fuel production and uranium enrichments into a queen—sites of nuclear weapon production? In how many moves might this happen?

On Jan. 14, crowds gathered in the heart of Tunisia’s capital, Tunis, as the people celebrated the first anniversary of the popular uprising that toppled the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the former Tunisian president who maintained an iron-fist rule over the country for over two decades. Protests were initiated not only by demands for greater political freedom, but also out of frustration at the unemployment rate and economic stagnation in Tunisia. Consequently, the uprising triggered protests in neighboring Arab countries that cumulated into what came to be known as the Arab Spring.

In 2007, Nicolas Sarkozy was elected as the 23rd president of France. Previously, he was the leader of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), a French conservative party. In his victory speech, Sarkozy said:

“The French people have chosen change. This change I will put into action […] I will do so in the spirit that all can find a place in our Republic, that all will feel recognized and respected in their dignity as citizens and humans [...] All those who feel that despite all their efforts, they still have nothing, must know that they will not be left aside and will get the same chances as everyone else.”