Ethnic Groups

For decades, Arab soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas battled by gun, by mortar, by rocket. Now, elections are the latest weapon in the struggle for land and power in Iraq's north. The ballot box has become a battleground in Nineveh province, a high-stakes combat zone where Kurds and Arabs will face off over the future shape of the country -- and confront each other over the past. The outcome could set the stage for another round of violence, which both sides insist that they do not want.

During the last days of Ramadan, Ahmad Chaudhry Nuruddin shut himself inside a small cubicle at the Bait ul Hameed Mosque with only a mattress, a chair and a few religious books. The slightly stooped 79-year-old strung a white sheet over the entrance to perfect his isolation. For the next few days, Nuruddin would follow the Islamic custom of I'tikaf, in which believers become virtual hermits, secluding themselves from the world to focus on the divine. "You spend your time remembering that God Almighty has created the world for the benefit of its people," he said.

Men, women and children gathered before dusk Saturday behind the Portuguese community center in Artesia. They packed the bleachers that circle the dirt ring with its high wood walls painted red. The three-day holiday weekend Festa da Bola would be filled with soccer, laughter, food. But on this evening, the main attraction was a bullfight. It was billed as a "bloodless bullfight" -- in which the animal is not killed in the ring.

In a sun-drenched valley of central Kenya, a few dozen villagers gather each Saturday to sit under the trees and conduct the painstaking work of reconciliation that their government leaders seem happy to avoid. These traumatized victims of Kenya's post-election clashes meet to talk, pray, sing and -- they hope -- heal.

Alice Uchi slowly pushed a near-empty shopping cart down the near-empty aisles flanked by near-empty shelves in what had been the first and largest modern Japanese supermarket in Little Tokyo. "I feel lost. Sad," the retired Los Angeles registered nurse said glumly. Uchi was catching the tail end of Mitsuwa Marketplace's 50% fire sale before it prepares Sunday to shut its doors, marking an emotional transition for many in Little Tokyo.

Hozaifa Parhat, a fruit seller from China's Muslim west, spoke passionately before a Guantanamo tribunal about his love for America and swore he never planned to fight the United States. The Chinese, however, were another matter. "I left my country to try to get something, get back and liberate my people and get our country independence," the ethnic Uighur testified in November 2004.

While the New York Times awaits a postelection sit-down with President Obama, Ebony magazine already nabbed its interview, the first given when Obama was still the president-elect. Once Obama was sworn in, he granted one of his first Q&A's to the editor of Black Enterprise magazine. His first known radio interview went to host El Pistolero, followed last week by a friendly phone-in to another giant of Spanish-language radio, Los Angeles-based Piolin.

Hongsun Kim has heard it all. When the number of Koreans began multiplying in Little Tokyo Towers a few years ago, complaints about them from Japanese residents quickly began to surface, the Los Angeles social worker said. "They smell of garlic." "They don't follow the rules." "They're going to take over." Then, from the Koreans: "The Japanese are snooty." "They don't greet you in the elevator." "They disdain Korean culture." "They're trying to push us out."

Three people were pulled out of a burning car Wednesday after they apparently set themselves on fire at a crowded intersection near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Chinese authorities tried to downplay the possibility that it was a political protest and said the occupants had come to the capital to "voice personal grievance."

Masrour Barzani, the head of the Kurdistan regional government's intelligence service and internal security agency in northern Iraq, rarely speaks in public. He is the powerful son of Massoud Barzani, the region's president, and is seen as one of the next generation of Kurdish leaders expected to defend the autonomy Iraqi Kurds gained after years of war and instability.