DANCER Vishnu Priya Ramachandran has just returned to the kingdom from India after stepping away from one of the country's leading reality television shows.

Bahrain's teenage swimming sensation Omar Yousef Jassim has snapped up the chance to put his talents to the test on the biggest sporting stage in the world - the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing.

A YOUNG mother is so concerned children are being put at risk when they travel unrestrained in cars in the kingdom she has produced her own booklet to encourage parents to buckle them up.

Swimming is hugely popular but, shockingly, recent US research shows that 98 per cent of recreational swimmers do not make gains in aerobic fitness.

If you want to know why single women get involved with married men, look at their parents, Ruth Sunderland reports. THE_affair between Sienna Miller and married actor Balthazar Getty has set off all kinds of debates.

Children are always the victims of divorce. They are the ones who suffer, often in silence, confused and caught up in an explosion of hate between the two people they look up to and love the most. GulfWeekly reporter Farishta Saeed interviewed two young Bahrainis who come from broken homes and talked to them about their experiences. They asked for their full names to be withheld.

Field and track Maryam Yusuf Jamal (women's 1,500m) - Age 23. A middle distance runner who has been compared to Britain's gold medallist Dame Kelly Holmes, Maryam is Ethiopian by birth but was refused permission to represent her homeland by the Ethiopian Athletic Federation.

GOLDEN girl Ruqaya Al Ghasra will be the kingdom's standard bearer holding the red and white Bahraini flag high during the Olympic Games opening ceremony on Friday.

Bahrain will be taking part in the historical Olympic Youth Camp. The camp is an educational and cultural exchange programme under the Olympic flag for young people aged 16 to 18.

There's one good way of avoiding a rash of damaging doping scandals at the Olympics: Catch the drug cheats before they get there.

LIKE everything else done for the Olympics, China's quest to clear up notoriously polluted skies in time for opening ceremonies this week has been marked by gargantuan effort.

IT is great news to hear the kingdom's very own Ruqaya Al Ghasra will be leading the Bahraini delegation at the opening ceremony of the Olympics due in two days' time.

A music store is setting the kingdom rocking by helping aspiring musicians to make the grade and gain enough confidence to reach for the stars.

Ambassador Balkrishna Shetty has urged members of the Indian community not to accept work in Bahrain without valid employment contracts and to avoid the 'middle men' who continue to sell 'free visas' despite a recent crackdown on the practice.