mayday, mayday: slavery still exists

New Yorker: fighting trafficking (of people)
NYT: slavery in China

WP: CIA head claims that global demographic changes, immigration threaten stability
LAT: 3 Uzbek immigrants killed in Moscow, part of "ultra-nationalist" trend
"This year has seen a dramatic increase in skinhead and neo-Nazi attacks, human rights groups say, many of them aimed at Caucasian and Central Asian immigrants from hardscrabble former Soviet republics who flock to Russia to eke out a living. The bodies turn up beaten, bruised and stabbed, sometimes mutilated or bearing signs of torture."

WP: US deepens role in Sadr City, where 500 were killed last month
LAT: civilian deaths in April - 969 - reach highest level since August
"The number of civilian deaths reported by the Iraqi government for April was 969, the highest since August, when 1,773 were recorded killed. At least 28 Iraqi soldiers and 69 policemen also were reported killed. Officials at two hospitals in Sadr City alone said they had received 321 bodies in the last month."

WP: army medic who earned silver star - the 2nd woman since WWII - removed from her post because women can't serve in combat
"Pfc. Monica Brown cracked open the door of her Humvee outside a remote village in eastern Afghanistan to the pop of bullets shot by Taliban fighters. But instead of taking cover, the 18-year-old medic grabbed her bag and ran through gunfire toward fellow soldiers in a crippled and burning vehicle...'We weren't supposed to take her out' on missions 'but we had to because there was no other medic,' said Lt. Martin Robbins, a platoon leader with Charlie Troop, 4th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, whose men Brown saved...Military personnel experts say that...the 1992 rules are vague, ill defined, and based on an outmoded concept of wars with clear front lines that rarely exist in today's counterinsurgencies."
Gdn: embedded journalist reports from Afghanistan
CSM: an Afghan officer leads NATO forces
"'The [Afghan National Army] has potential to face the challenges of face-to-face war if the spring offensive happens to have the form of conventional war,' says Ahmad Idrees Rahmani, a cofounder of Afghanistan's Center for Research and Policy Studies in Kabul. 'The problem of the war against the Taliban is that [conventional warfare] is not their fighting strategy. Each time they take over a district, the ANA and other forces can easily take them out in a few days.'
Trouble begins, he adds, 'when they retreat and attack in the form of guerrilla fighters. Then it becomes hard to find a fish in the sea of people.'"
LAT: attack on drug eradication forces kills 19, wounds 40
CSM: insurgency moving north

LAT: Mexico deploys troops to Tijuana

BBC: Algeria and terrorism

Gdn: US kills "top Al-Qaeda militant" in Somalia

LAT: Mugabe concedes election, calls for run-off
Chris Blattman: summary of coverage
"It's a matter of hours before the South African government says something disappointingly conciliatory, and the Brits and Americans make ridiculous and empty threats."

LAT: El Fasher, Darfur "humanitarian boomtown"
"In stark contrast to the burned-out villages and squalid displacement camps that characterize much of Darfur, this dust-choked city is booming, thanks largely to an influx of scores of United Nations agencies and private charities, as well as the newly deployed U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission...Retail sales are soaring thanks to the comparatively high salaries paid to international staffers, though foreign demand is also driving up prices on everything from real estate to bottled water. 'It's a war economy,' said Abduljabber Abdellah Fadul, rural planning professor at El Fasher University."
WP: refugees unable to return to southern Sudan

BBC: the high cost of peace deals and coalition politics in Kenya
"Finance Minister Amos Kimunya says he may be forced to shift funding from vital programmes like resettling the displaced to pay for new ministries...Kenyan politicians are among the world's best paid MPs - each taking home about $17,000 in salaries and allowances each month."

BBC: contesting Obasanjo's legacy

BBC: ICC indicts Congo's warlord "the Terminator"

BBC: report says Mozambique police kill with impunity

BBC: Spain denies extradition request for Isabel Peron, accused of crimes during her 1974-76 rule of Argentina

Gdn: photos from a prison in Northern Ireland

LAT: the 33rd anniversary of the fall of South Vietnam, remembered in Little Saigon, Orange County

The Hoya: Georgetown exhibits shame, does not renew Feith's contract

above the law

WP: the infamous memo has been released: it's as bad as everyone said
Slate: how to undo the damage, to rule of law in wartime, and to the presidency
WP: some domestic laws need attention too

LAT: tracking Al-Qaeda's "chief of external operations"

Gdn: Iraqi military moves in to Shia stronghold in Basra; the British will stick around
Econ: regulated fighting good for getting along

Gdn: Mugabe on the fence, but pressure builds against him
Ind: state-run media suggests there will be a run-off
Econ: some ideas for how to intervene if Mugabe goes in the end

BBC: Betancourt needs urgent medical attention; Colombia suspends military activity in area, France sends medical mission with Red Cross
Adam Isacson: Chávez needs to intervene

global protest hopping
WP: China says the Dalai Lama incited riots

BBC: Nike factory workers strike in Vietnam

BBC: rare protest in Uzbekistan over relocation of market

BBC: riots in the Ivory Coast over cost of food

BBC: riot police tear gas protest in Kenya over Kibaki's move to increase the number of cabinet members

Econ: protests continue in Armenia over election

hodgepodge
BBC: Kashmir police refuse request to identify 1,000 bodies found in unmarked graves

LAT: peace talks in Darfur "going nowhere"

LAT: Bernie Ahern to resign as Ireland's PM, financial inquiry turning into scandal

BBC: Turkey continues its assault on the PKK, killing 16

BBC: Russia to send aid to Kosovo Serbs

Gdn: drug tourism, day 2: stupid backpackers in Colombia
NYT: intervening on the demand side of the drug trade

Econ: can't think? eat something!

anniversaries

lots of outlets focusing on the 5th anniversary of Iraq invasion...most are pessimistic. here are 2 from the LAT: signs of progress don't last long enough to report, and one Iraqi general's story of lost hope
"As the fifth anniversary of the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein nears, he serves as a singular witness to the hopes and horrors of the last five years: a man haunted by his role in a terrible stampede on a Baghdad bridge that left nearly 1,000 people dead; a man targeted for his involvement in the discovery of a Shiite police torture chamber; a man devastated by the killing of his son."

New Yorker: documenting life at Abu Ghraib
“'[the prison looked] Like something from a Mad Max movie,' Sergeant Javal Davis, of the 372nd, said. 'Just like that—like, medieval.' There were more than two and a half miles of wall with twenty-four towers, enclosing two hundred and eighty acres of prison ground. And inside, Davis said, 'it’s nothing but rubble, blown-up buildings, dogs running all over the place, rabid dogs, burnt remains. The stench was unbearable: urine, feces, body rot.'
The prisoners—several thousand of them, clad in orange—were crowded behind concertina wire. 'The encampment they were in when we saw it at first looked like one of those Hitler things, like a concentration camp, almost,' Davis said. 'They’re in there, in their little jumpsuits, outside in the mud. Their rest rooms was running over. It was just disgusting. You didn’t want to touch anything. Whatever the worst thing that comes to your mind, that was it—the place you would never, ever, ever, ever send your worst enemy.'”

Ind: older atrocities: remembering Mai Lai, 40 years later

NYT: US trying to convince Pakistan to embrace counterinsurgency (against militants) rather than conventional warfare (against India) (SV wonders if Musharraf cites Rumsfeld and Cheney)

Gdn: Tibet demonstrations, violence move to Xiahe
BBC: Taiwanese plan to demonstrate against anti-secession law

Ind: Iranian students reflect on the elections
Gdn: despite risks from the Morality Police, women resist restrictions through 'self expression' (indoors)

Ind: mercenary Mann agrees to give evidence of other coup plotters to Equatorial Guinea

BBC: the United National Liberation Front (UNLF) of Manipur claims 6 Indian soldiers' lives

WP: the Left (read: Communist Party) in Germany making a comeback