"It was the first successful labor union for farmworkers,” says author Miriam Pawel. “It was very much the civil rights movement of the West,". But fifty years after its founding by the late Cesar Chavez, the UFW is struggling to retain membership and influence.

It is a painful rite of passage for girls in many African and Middle Eastern countries. But in Senegal there has been a remarkably successful campaign to change people's attitudes towards female circumcision in an effort to eliminate the practice altogether.

Activist groups should bring about a greater awareness of worker rights issues and add a moral voice to global economic matters, says David Schilling of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

The Supreme Court is weighing the legal challenge to Arizona's strict immigration law, and religious groups opposed to the law are appealing to language throughout the scriptures "to take care of the stranger," says Catholic News Service staff writer Patricia Zapor.

“We don’t treat soldiers that are atheists as atheists. We treat them as soldiers,” says Colonel Stephen Sicinski, base commander at Fort Bragg. But Captain Jason Torpy says army chaplains are "either ignorant of or hostile to nontheistic beliefs."

They say Israel's Law of Return permits them to become Israelis. But some Israelis wonder whether they are really Jews.

Catholic Cubans have strong lay networks, says Catholic News Service staff writer Patricia Zapor, but they still need and want "a little bit more of everything—more freedom, more services, more priests."

"America has an agenda for homosexuals in Uganda," according to Pastor Joseph Serwadda, and accepting gay rights as human rights and human rights as gay rights "is going to be very tough on Africa."

“We don’t want a religious state,” says Muslim Brotherhood member of parliament Ossama Yassin. “We want a modern, civil, democratic state belonging to the people.”

“If we can bring in some light, the darkness will not overcome the light, and that’s where faith is. We believe that,” says Lyn Lusi, who has spent her professional life in medical care for the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo.