At the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War, Tony Blair claimed the risk of terrorists being supplied Weapons of Mass Destruction by “rogue” states justified a policy of invasion rather than containment and deterrence. Alex Holland analyses this argument for regime change.

Sri Lanka’s opposition talked of giving concessions to the country’s defeated Tamil minority. The Sinhalese majority said no. Melanie Gouby analyses Sri Lanka’s presidential election.

By Estella Hung

In one image a mother wearing headphones breastfeeds her child sometime during the last decade. In another, a group of fakirs poses in regal surrounds sometime in the 1890s. In still another, a lone woman, her head bound in a khemar, stares penetratingly out amid waving flags of the Pakistan Muslim League during a protest against the newspaper cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in 2005.

By Laila Sumpton

It is 1948, Palestine, and forbidden lovers Ali and Nada are prevented from marrying because her father disapproves of Ali’s brother, “mad” Yusuf. Personal and political worlds collide as the British mandate ends, and the futures of Yusuf, Ali and Nada become “what ifs” that their older selves try to unravel. We are thrown into a tragic-comic world where poetry, pranks, politics and proverbs all interweave with the secrets and forced decisions that the Nakbah inflicted on the small community of Baissamoon in northern Palestine.

By Faisal Shakeel

The revelation by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates that notorious security firm Blackwater, now known as Xe, is operating in Pakistan did more harm to the sitting government than anything else. The media zeroed in on his admission and beamed across the country the previous statements of US and Pakistani officials denying Blackwater’s presence in Pakistan.

The English Defence League (EDL), who are so fond of telling British Muslims that they should observe one law - British law - rather than demanding sharia courts, gave an interesting demonstration of what they mean by that at their protest in Stoke on Saturday, filmed by independent Stoke blog Pits 'n' Pots: