The start of the Caribbean hurricane season brings the arrival of Hurricane Dean. Here, debris covers the John Compton Highway in Castries, St. Lucia, after Hurricane Dean passed, August 17, 2007.

Dean, which is gathering force and momentum and will probably be upgraded to a Category 5 storm, look set to do a repeat performce on Jamaica on Sunday, August 19, 2007.

A Category Five Hurricane, according to the The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, is the highest level bringing winds greater than 155 mph (135 kt or 249 km/hr).

A Congolese student has launched legal action in Belgium to have the comic book “Tintin in the Congo” declared racist and removed from bookstores.

The book portrays Africans as stereotypical black characters and shows whites as their colonial masters.

“I want to put an end to sales of this cartoon book in shops, both for children and for adults. It’s racist and it is filled with colonial-era propaganda,” said Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu, who lives in Brussels.

Bienvenu is also seeking symbolic damages of one euro ($1.38) from Moulinsart, the publisher that owns the rights to Tintin.

A call by Britain’s Commission for Racial Equality earlier this year for bookstores to remove the Tintin edition from their shelves prompted one chain to move the book from its children’s section to the shelves for adult graphic stories.

Sales of Tintin In The Congo subsequently soared following protests over 3800 percent. The book, which first appeared in Belgian newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle as a comic strip in 1930-1931, is part of the series “The Adventures of Tintin” by the Belgian author and illustrator Herge.

In May, the centenary of the birth of Herge – real name Georges Remi – was marked with a set of stamps, a 20-euro coin and an exhibition in honour of the ageless reporter – one of the country’s most famous exports.

A Salvadoran member of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) holds a Venezuelan flag during the commemoration of the fifteenth anniversary of the peace agreement which ended El Salvador’s civil war, January 16, 2007.

Northern England Muslim teaching assistant, Aishah Azmi, who sparked a political storm after she refused to remove her veil during lessons, won her employment tribunal case for victimisation against the school which suspended her but lost her claims for discrimination and harassment.

Ms Azmi was awarded £1,000 for “injury to feelings” after she succeeded in her claim of victimisation. But her claims of direct and indirect discrimination, and her claim of harassment, were dismissed. Kirklees Council suspended Aishah Azmi, 24, after she refused to remove her veil while teaching at Headfield Church of England Junior School in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

In a statement Mrs Azmi said she was considering an appeal against the decision to dismiss three of her claims.

Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu celebrated his 75th birthday Saturday, October 7, 2006, with a glamorous gala dinner attended by 1,200 guests, capping off weeks of celebration in honour of the tireless campaigner against apartheid.

Among those who attended were former South Afrian President Nelson Mandela ators Danny Glover, Samuel L Jackson, music maestro Carlos Santana, Desperate Housewives actress Alfre Woodard, CCH Pounder from the drama series ER, Christina Ricci, Stevie Wonder, Denzel Washington, Jonathan Butler, Johnny Clegg, Quincy Jones and former Robben Island political prisoner Ahmed Kathrada.

Tutu was named earlier this year as a member of a U.N. advisory panel on genocide prevention. He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1984 for his anti-apartheid work. He retired in 1996, two years after the official end of apartheid.

British MP Jack Straw came under fire after revealing he regularly asked Muslim women to remove their veil when they visit him in his Blakburn constituency office. He claims Muslim women wearing the full veil made him feel uncomfortable and was bound to make “better, positive relations” between communities more difficult, as it could be seen “as a visible statement of separation and difference”.

A nationalist demonstrator stands under a huge Turkish flag as he tries to protect himself from the rain during a protest outside of a courthouse in Istanbul.

Hezbollah cubs march carrying the party’s flags as they walk past a portrait of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the southern Lebanese port city of Tyre on their way to Beirut to participate in tomorrow’s massive “victory” rally.

The world’s first woman space tourist, Iranian born, USA entrepeneur, Anousheh Ansari, smiles and waves during the farewell ceremony as she enters the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft before the launch at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, Monday September 18, 2006.

A Pakistani female supporter participates in a rally, holding sign “Muslim women consider Pope’s remarks as prelude of crusade,” against Pope Benedict XVI for his remarks about Islam.