by Catherine Philp, Times Online, UK - As Zimbabwe’s new school term began after a six-week election break, thousands of teachers failed to turn up, kept away by violence, intimidation or simply poverty caused by the hyperinflation that has soared even higher since March’s disputed elections.

by Mona Eltahawy, Agence Global, USA - On May 4, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak turns 80. To mark the big day for the man who has ruled them for 26 years, Egyptians who have known no other leader and who are increasingly going online to challenge him have urged their compatriots to go on strike, wear black, and write “No” to Mubarak on their money. I know all of this, not through news stories, but because activists publicized the details and demands of the strike on Facebook.

by Catherine Jiang, Asia Sentinel, China - I am a daughter of the one-child experiment. I was born in 1978, a year before the policy came into effect, to a former Red Guard mother who wrote propaganda for the government and a mechanical engineer father who retired young from a state-owned company, and too late to have a sibling. Because they were members of the Communist Party, breaking the rules by having a second child was unthinkable.

by Alison Katz, Le Monde diplomatique, France - Since 26 April 2007 (the 21st anniversary of Chernobyl), a large placard has informed WHO employees each day that one million children in the area around Chernobyl are irradiated and ill. IndependentWHO, the group organising the action, accuses the WHO of a cover-up of the health consequences of the catastrophe, and of failing to assist populations in danger.

by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, USA - Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, Sami al-Haj spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantanamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. We hear al-Haj’s first public remarks from his hospital bed in Sudan and speak to his brother, Asim al-Haj.

by Friederike Freiburg and Anna Reimann, Spiegel Online, Germany - Vandals have desecrated graves at the historic Jewish cemetery in Berlin's Weissensee district for the second time in less than three days. The head of the Central Council of Jews has described the attack as an "intolerable insult" to Shoah victims.

by an IWPR reporter in Baghdad and Tiare Rath, IWPR, Iraq - In Iraq, suicide bombings by women are increasing. This week, two women blew themselves up in Diyala province, bringing to nine the number of such suicide bombings in the first four months of 2008. There were six attacks in 2007, the worst at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, in which 40 people were killed. Little is known about the lives or motivations of female suicide bombers in Iraq. But some analysts suggest that one reason for the rise is that women are using violence as a method of protest against perceived injustices and deteriorating living conditions.

by Caroline Brothers, International Herald Tribune, France - It is midnight, and eight hooded figures slip around the side of a freight truck at a gas station on the outskirts of this northern French port. They wait in the orange half-light while one tries the locked truck door. It doesn't give, and seconds later the figures vanish among the dozens of semi-trailers at this, the last truck stop before England. Most weeknights, a smuggler leads clandestine migrants across the maze of motorways that encircle Calais to parking lots like this, where drivers sleep before catching a ferry to Dover, 33 kilometers, or 21 miles, away.

by Bronwen Maddox, Times Online, UK - It is never a good sign when the main players in Pakistan’s politics decamp to another country for crisis talks. Often it has been London but yesterday it was Dubai as Asif Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, and the head of her Pakistan People’s Party, was holed up in Dubai with Nawaz Sharif, leader of the second main party in the governing coalition. Their subject – how judges sacked by President Musharraf should be reinstated – was always controversial. The question is whether it is going to be lethal: to the coalition, to the judiciary and to Pakistan’s Constitution. Unfortunately, it could be, with the only winner Musharraf.

by Edwidge Danticat, The Progressive, USA - Because, as you may have possibly heard, the Democratic Presidential candidates did not campaign in Miami, where I live, and they, as of now, are not having a revote here, I am one of a handful of people with an Obama ’08 bumper sticker glued to the back of my car. In a city filled with exotic SUVs and flashier automobiles, my small Toyota Echo inspires conversation wherever I go. Though I have published a few books, I am not used to so much attention. In addition to the occasional supportive honking and thumbs-ups, these are the five most frequent inquiries to my bumper sticker and my now, oft-repeated responses to them.

by Anneliese Rohrer, BBC, UK - Soon the hordes of international journalists will pack up their cameras and tape recorders and leave Austria again.
The family of Josef Fritzl, the father/grandfather who kept his own daughter in the dungeon for 24 years, will have to deal with their broken lives. The town, the region, the country and all of the authorities will have to begin intense soul-searching.

by Nurit Wurgaft, Haaretz, Israel - "I went to school for five years and figured my learning days were over," said E. a boy from Darfur who came to Israel seven months ago. "My parents worked in the fields and so did I. When I left, they thought I would work and send money home. I told them I was going to study and had no money. Now I don't phone my mother because every time I call, she asks for money. I know their situation is difficult, but I can't give up this opportunity to learn. I told her this, but she doesn't understand." This small group reflects a new phenomenon. Dozens of minors from Eritrea, Darfur and southern Sudan have come to Israel in the past year alone.

by Carter Dougherty and Katrin Bennhold, International Herald Tribune, France - When the local bakery increased the price of a baguette for the third time in six months last year, Anne-Laure Renard and Guy Talpot invested in a bread-baking machine. When gasoline became their single biggest monthly expense in January, they decided to sell one of their two cars. Now, as everything from baby milk to chocolate desserts drives up their living costs, Renard, a teacher, and Talpot, a mailman, are planning their most radical lifestyle change yet: They are getting married to reduce their tax bill.

by Claire Bigg, Radio Free Europe, Czech Republic - Just over one year after President Vladimir Putin handed him the Chechen leadership, Ramzan Kadyrov has taken innumerable steps to tighten his grip over the war-battered republic. But the recent standoff between his forces and a rival pro-Kremlin clan underscores the volatile situation in Chechnya as it rebuilds from more than a decade of war against separatist rebels.

by Laura Kasinof, Middle East Times, Egypt - Egyptians are using the online social networking tool Facebook to defy the government's attempt to muzzle the media and hush recent incidents of police brutality during a strike by workers in a town in the Nile Delta.

by Terri Judd, The Independent, UK - At first glance Shawbo Ali Rauf appears to be slumbering on the grass, her pale brown curls framing her face, her summer skirt spread about her. But the awkward position of her limbs and the splattered blood reveal the true horror of the scene.

by Beatrice Gachenge, Business Daily Africa, Kenya - “I have been forced to lay off about 10 workers. If the situation does not improve I just might be forced to close down,” said Mr Kirtesh. Other several small millers who were not willing to be named said that they may be forced to go under, unless the government steps in to subsidize the merchandise.

by Amy Goodman, truthdig, USA - As the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race continues to focus on lapel pins and pastors, America is ailing. As I travel around the country, I find people are angry and motivated. Like Dr. Rocky White, a physician from a conservative, evangelical background who practices in rural Alamosa, Colo. A tall, gray-haired Westerner in black jeans, a crisp white shirt and a bolo tie, Dr. White is a leading advocate for single-payer health care. He wasn’t always.

by Juliette Terzieff, World Politics Review, USA - As of June 1, anyone mentioned in a Slovak newspaper article will be entitled to a rebuttal in the same publication, according to provisions of a new law that has angered media freedom advocates and raised fears that official and self-censorship may be the law's result.

by Amy Knight, New York Review of Books, USA - More to the point, Putin, as Medvedev's prime minister, will continue to have a powerful influence on decision-making in Russia. The presidential administration is now filled with Putin appointees, who are unlikely to shift their loyalties to Medvedev, at least until they see how the situation evolves over the next year or two. And Putin, as prime minister, will be in charge of the entire national economy. Although the Russian constitution grants authority to the president to dismiss a prime minister (as Yeltsin did often), he must, in order to appoint a replacement, get approval from the Duma, which is dominated by Putin loyalists.

by Andrea Elliott, International Herald Tribune, France - Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country's elite colleges. They would be ready, in Almontaser's words, to become "ambassadors of peace and hope." Things have not gone according to plan.

by Meenakshi Ganguly, openDemocracy, UK - The victory of the Maoists in Nepal's election sets a critical challenge for the government that will follow, says Meenakshi Ganguly of Human Rights Watch.

by Dahlia Lithwick, Slate Magazine, USA - It's pretty much a given that our "terror trials" aren't working. The long-awaited prosecutions of a fistful of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay—proceedings just getting under way after more than six years of tinkering—are barely moving forward, for reasons now having more to do with politics than law.