This is our new Friday Digest! Every Friday, this weekly news round-up gives us the occasion to share with you news from various topics: politics to arts, entertainment, media, science, sports, fun and less fun news… This digest is a list of news published this week on the Internet (Friday to Friday), selected by the Sama Team, and it is by no means exhaustive.

If you want to suggest a news to be added in the next Friday Digest, contact us.

Women’s Struggle Against HIV in Rural Zimbabwe
It’s Easter in Zimbabwe, and women are flocking to rural clinics to get contraceptives. Men are coming back from South Africa to spend the holidays at home. Women know their husbands have sexual partners in the neighboring country. They also know that injectable or oral contraceptives won’t protect them from HIV and sexually transmitted infections. But at least they prevent unwanted pregnancies and save innocent lives…

For French, Arrest Forces Some Questions of Identity
Anne Cottavoz is of two minds about the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair, her American mind and her French mind, though she concedes that after living in the United States for 27 years, there may be some blurring of the two. Ms. Cottavoz, a Frenchwoman who owns a health food store on the Upper West Side, said Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest exposed a “slippery slope” in France between what she called “chauvinist behavior”…

Germany to end to nuclear power by 2022
Germany has announced plans to become the first major industrialised power to shut down all its nuclear plants, with a phase-out due to be wrapped up by 2022. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen announced the government’s decision, which was prompted by the Japanese nuclear disaster, in the early hours of this morning, describing it as “irreversible”. He said the vast majority of Germany’s 17 reactors…

Egyptian general admits ‘virginity checks’ conducted on protesters
A senior Egyptian general admits that “virginity checks” were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities. The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges…

Afghan president seeks to limit NATO airstrikes
Angered by civilian casualties, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday he will no longer allow NATO airstrikes on houses, issuing his strongest statement yet against strikes that the military alliance says are key to its war on Taliban insurgents. The president’s remarks follow a recent strike that mistakenly killed a group of children and women in southern Helmand province. He said it would be the last…

Cellphones may cause cancer, international agency says
An international panel of experts says cellphones are possibly carcinogenic to humans after reviewing details from dozens of published studies. The statement was issued in Lyon, France, on Tuesday by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a weeklong meeting of experts. They reviewed possible links between cancer and the type of electromagnetic radiation found in cellphones, microwaves…

The Bilingual Advantage
A cognitive neuroscientist, Ellen Bialystok has spent almost 40 years learning about how bilingualism sharpens the mind. Her good news: Among other benefits, the regular use of two languages appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease symptoms. Dr. Bialystok, 62, a distinguished research professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, was awarded a $100,000 Killam Prize last year for…

European food outbreak soars; mystery deepens
The number of people hit by a massive European outbreak of foodborne bacterial infections is one third higher than previously known and a stunningly high number of patients suffer from a potentially deadly complication than can shut down their kidneys, officials said Wednesday. The death toll rose to 17, with German authorities reporting that an 84-year-old woman with the complication had died on Sunday…

Twitter adding a photo-sharing feature
Twitter is going beyond 140 characters by adding a photo-sharing service. The social network is rolling out an image-hosting feature to users over the next couple of weeks, CEO Dick Costolo announced Wednesday at the All Things Digital conference here. Users will be able to upload photos through Twitter’s website to start, with desktop and mobile applications coming later, Costolo said. To construct the service’s backbone…

Japanese seniors volunteer to go into nuclear ‘danger zone’
Talk about taking one for the team. When an earthquake hit Japan almost three months ago, setting off an explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, we expected the young, fit and able-bodied to take care of the repairs, right? But as radiation continues to leak out of the plant, an unexpected group has stepped up to help. Time Magazine’s Global Spin blogger Hannah Beech reports on the Skilled…

Design guru reveals Yves Saint-Laurent hate mail
American fashion designer and film director Tom Ford has revealed he received angry letters from his predecessor and rival Yves Saint-Laurent. Ford, 49, took over Yves Saint-Laurent’s eponymous fashion house in 1999 when parts of it were sold to the Gucci group, where Ford was creative director. And the designer says that while the pair started as friends, the relationship soon soured — to the point that Saint-Laurent…

Microsoft gives peek at Windows 8
The next version of Windows will look a lot like Windows Phone 7. But the familiar PC design is still there under the hood. Microsoft unveiled the design for Windows 8 at the All Things Digital conference here on Wednesday. The software giant plans to provide a more extensive demonstration at a conference for application developers in September. Windows 8, which may not be the final name for the operating system…