Female journalists assassinated in Afghanistan
Two female journalists, Zakia Zaki and Sanga Amach, have been killed by gunmen in Afghanistan in the past week. Zaki ran a private radio station and was headmistress of a school. Amach was a news presenter on a private television channel in Kabul.
French NGO Reporters sans frontières has called for a special task force to protect journalists in Iraq, who have come under increasing threat.
Taliban: Bin Laden alive and kicking
According to Mansour Dadullah, brother of the recently slain Taliban commander Mullah Dadullah, Osama bin Laden is alive and well, and issuing orders to Taliban militants in Afghanistan.
A boat full of Taliban fighters was sunk in the Helmand River, drowning at least 30.
Iranian Arabs denounce discrimination
Residents and activists in Iran's Arab-dominated southwestern province of Khuzestan are protesting Tehran's reluctance to engage with their demands. National liberation organisations as well as parties demanding greater autonomy are increasingly speaking out against the treatment of Iran's Arab minority. Bomb blasts in the region in 2006 led the Iranian government to accuse the British government of supporting "terrorists" in the restive region.
One hundred and thirty-nine writers and scholars protest in the New York Review of Books the detention of Iranian-American scholar Haleh Esfandiari by Iranian authorities.
Oromos abused in Yemen
Oromo emigrants to Yemen are facing mounting discrimination and abuse at the hands of their hosts. Though they claim to be fleeing political and ethnic repression in Ethiopia, Yemeni and Ethiopian authorities view them as "economic migrants", leaving them between a rock and a hard place.
Yemeni officials are trying to redress the image of their country as a wild and anarchic place, in an effort to make the coastal Arabian nation once more appealing to tourists.
Ethiopia has pledged to withdraw its forces from Somalia once attacks against military targets cease.
Beirut suburb bombed
A bomb has exploded in a Christian suburb of eastern Beirut, injuring ten people, as fighting continues in Palestinian refugee camps between the Lebanese army and militants groups.
Egypt releases Islamic Jihad activists
Egyptian officials have released 130 members of the militant Islamist group Islamic Jihad after the jailed activists signed pledges to non-violence. Many of the released men had been detained without charge.
Off the rails in Sri Lanka
Tamil Tiger rebels blew up sections of train track, derailing a train and injuring four people, in the east of Sri Lanka.
Sistani aide murdered
Raheem al-Hasnawi, a representative and aide to influential Shia leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani ally was gunned down in the town of al-Mishkhab near Najaf in Iraq.
Mounting Thai insurgency
The insurgency in the south of Thailand intensified through the month of May, deepening a conflict that has claimed over 2,000 lives since 2004.
Parcels and pardons in Colombia
Two letter bombs in the last two days have exploded in Colombian state buildings in Bogota, injuring several officials.
Colombian authorities have begun releasing rebel prisoners in what President Alvaro Uribe has described as a "unilateral gesture of goodwill".
Nagorno-Karabakh refuses to be sidelined
Arkady Gukasyan, the separatist leader of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, has insisted that peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan must include representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh to be legitimate and effective.
Ninjas to disarm in Congo
"Ninja" rebels, who waged an insurgency in the southeast of the Republic of Congo for five years, have agreed to disarm, with their leader Pastor Ntumi accepting a government post. He will be in charge of peace and reconciliation efforts in the oil-rich nation.
With the support of the United Nations Development Programme, the various ethnic militant groups of the Ituri region in the northwest of the Democratic Republic of Congo are entering a phase of demobilisation.
Turkish military presses for action against Kurdish bases
Even though it is a "rite of spring" for Turkish forces to mass along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, analysts see a harsher, more restless edge in military rhetoric targeted against alleged Kurdish Workers' Party bases in Iraq.
With the majority of the Turkish public likely to vote for the Justice and Development Party in presidential elections, a rightist Turkish writer argues that popular elections do not necessarily constitute democracy.
Olmert and Haniyeh toe-to-toe in the Guardian
Israeli and Palestinian leaders Ehud Olmert and Ismail Haniyeh square off in the Guardian over the legacy of the 1967 war.
openDemocracy looks to the past and the future of the Palestine-Israel conflict.
