Just over a year away, around October 2006, people will have yet another go at selecting their representatives in parliament. Once again, the power will be in our own hands to have a say, small as that may be, in how our country should be run. With that event looming closer and closer on the …

The World Heritage Committee, chaired by Themba Wakashe, South Africa’s Deputy Director-General for Heritage and National Archives, today inscribed 17 cultural sites on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Bulbuls, one in flight, originally uploaded by malyousif. My weekend… watching various birds visiting my garden. These are White Cheeked Bulbuls which are indigenous to Bahrain. They are endangered due to crows traveling from India and settling here. Crows raid the bulbuls’ nests, destroy them and eat their young. There is a program to get …

MECCA, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) – Some of Islam’s historic sites in Mecca, possibly including a home of the Prophet Mohammad, are under threat from Saudi real estate developers and Wahhabi Muslims who view them as promoting idolatry. Sami Angawi, an expert on the region’s Islamic architecture, said 1,400-year-old buildings from the early Islamic period risk …

Please accept my apologies if you had problems accessing Mahmood’s Den. The server is getting heavy hits and I’ve just maxed out Apache’s configuration as well as MySQL’s. I’m afraid they won’t be able to cope too well until the interest subsides a bit. Nevertheless, thank you wired.com, the Guardian, the Times AND the Financial …