The Qatar-based media giant Al Jazeera has purchased a broadacasting station in the Bosnian capital. The operation is slated to begin January 2011 in Sarajevo and later be extended to the entire region. News of the Arab broadcaster's Bosnian expansion has produced diverse reactions.

Is all that foreign aid flowing into Pakistan in the aftermath of last month’s massive floods changing the way Pakistanis feel about the West, and in particular the United States?

A footbridge being built for the Commonwealth Games in India collapsed on Tuesday, injuring 27 people and highlighting the raft of problems that have so far blighted the event, meant to showcase an emerging global power. Preparations for October's $6 billion Commonwealth Games, intended to be the coming-out party for India that the Olympics were for China, are so far behind schedule that the event risks becoming a farce.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said Tuesday that the European Union needs a continent-wide plan for illegal Gypsy camps and children beggars that he described as plagues of the 19th century. At the same time, the EU justice commissioner maintained her concerns about France's expulsions of more than 1,000 Gypsies, or Roma, in recent weeks

The main danger for the EU today is not the fall in the euro exchange rate or the growing budget deficit of “problematic” member-states but the deepening internal split in the public opinion and the growing nationalist moods.

Earlier this year at the National People's Congress, Premier Wen Jiabao stated in his government work report that China will attach more importance to cultural development to enhance the international influence of Chinese culture. This is just the latest confirmation that China recognizes that it has to enhance its global image by the exercise of soft power.

It is arguably modern Europe's flagship ideal: the freedom to move across borders and seek a better life elsewhere. But in the Europe of Nicolas Sarkozy, Silvio Berlusconi, and others, the privilege has its limits -- and its paradoxes. Effectively excluded, it seems, is the one group singly most identified with a nomadic and peripatetic existence: the continent's 10 million-strong Romany population.

The global image of India as a poor country that receives large amounts of aid from rich nations is so well entrenched that it may come as a surprise to many, Indians among them, that the country is fast becoming a major donor.