Issue: 30 August-3 September 2010

Congolese community leaders say they begged local U.N. officials and army commanders to protect villagers days before rebels gang-raped scores of people, from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother.

The rapes occurred in and around Luvungi, a village of about 2,200 people that is a half-hour drive from a U.N. peacekeepers' camp and a 90-minute ride from Walikale, a major mining center and base for hundreds of Congolese troops.

The number of people treated for rape in the July 30 to Aug. 4 attacks now stands at 242 — a high number even for eastern Congo, where rape has become a daily hazard.

A suicide bombing claimed by the Pakistani Taliban killed at least 43 Shiite Muslims at a procession in southwest Pakistan on Friday. The assault sharply drove up the toll of sectarian assaults in a country battered by massive flooding.

[...] Two other militant bombings left at least two people dead and several wounded on a day convulsed by the violence that threatens the stability of Pakistan's weak civilian government — an essential but problematic Western ally in the fight against Islamist militants.

The first attack of the day was a roadside bombing in the northwestern city of Peshawar that killed one police officer and wounded three others, officials said.

Hours later, a suicide attack on a mosque belonging to the minority Ahmadi sect killed at least one person and wounded several others in the nearby town of Mardan.

Gunmen shot dead five campaign workers for a candidate in Afghanistan's parliamentary election next month, officials said on Sunday, another sign of rising insecurity as Washington prepares to review its war strategy.

The deaths of the five -- from a group of 10 kidnapped in western Herat province -- were confirmed only hours after a candidate in the Sept. 18 poll from the same area, Haji Abdul Manan, was shot dead as he walked to a mosque to pray.

Manan was the fourth candidate to be killed. The rising toll drew a sharp condemnation from the U.N. mission (UNAMA) in Afghanistan, which is assisting with the election.

[...] Manan was the fourth candidate to be killed.The rising toll drew a sharp condemnation from the U.N. mission (UNAMA) in Afghanistan, which is assisting with the election.

The United States formally ends its combat operations in Iraq today, more than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said today that Iraq has gained its independence as a result. Maliki told Iraqis in a televised speech that Iraq is now 'sovereign and independent' and that its security forces will deal with all threats in the country -- whether from domestic terrorism or threats from abroad.

He said Iraq is now 'making its own decisions about its present and future,' adding that 'this day, August 31st, will always be an important day for all Iraqis.'

His comments came as U.S. President Barack Obama is due to formally declare the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq in a speech from the White House later today.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opened the first direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in two years by pledging the full support of the United States to a process expected to be difficult and with long odds of success.

[...] The U.S.-led talks are the first direct negotiations in almost two years between the two sides, who are at odds over Jewish settlements, the blockade of the Gaza Strip, and borders of a two-state solution, among other things.

Both leaders pledged their commitment to finding agreement and erasing a long history of mutual antagonism and suspicion, but each also predicted a difficult road ahead.

Waves of killings blamed on drug cartels are continuing to sweep Mexico. Here, Mexican political scientist Eduardo Guerrero Gutierrez examines the reasons for the violence and the prospects for the future.

Drug-related violence in Mexico has killed nearly 30,000 people in the first 45 months of the current government, and its fast increase has been unstoppable.

If the killings continue to increase at the current rate that total will rise to about 75,000 by the time the government's term in office ends in December 2012.

[...] The violence is concentrated in a handful of cities: 20% of drug-related killings have happened in Ciudad Juarez alone. The remaining 80% are in 162 municipalities out of the 2,456 that exist in Mexico.

Peace will not be achieved in northern Yemen until the government releases all the prisoners it captured during years of conflict, a Zaidi rebel group said after signing a deal to bolster a fragile truce.

According to the new deal, the government will release rebel prisoners and the Houthis will return stolen Yemeni military weapons to the Qatari mediator.

The undefined border between ex-civil war foes in northern and southern Sudan is creating tension in the oil-rich area as the south nears an independence vote, the International Crisis Group warned on Thursday.

The border was meant to be defined six months after the 2005 peace deal that ended Sudan's 22-year civil war, but negotiations by the committee established to demarcate it are in 'deadlock,' the Brussels-based think-tank ICG said.

'As the country's oil resources are concentrated in these areas, the political and economic implications of border demarcation have been amplified, and some border areas remain dangerously militarized,' the report read.

Ismail Haji Noor, a local government official, recently arrived in this notorious pirate den with a simple message: we need your help.

With the Shabab militant group sweeping across Somalia and the American-backed central government teetering on life support, Mr. Noor stood on a beach flanked by dozens of pirate gunmen, two hijacked ships over his shoulder, and announced, 'From now on we’ll be working together.'

He hugged several well-known pirate bosses and called them 'brother' and later explained that while he saw the pirates as criminals and eventually wanted to rehabilitate them, right now the Shabab were a much graver threat. 'Squished between the two, we have to become friends with the pirates,' Mr. Noor said.

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International asked Rwanda on Tuesday to review its laws on 'genocide ideology' saying they are being used as a guise to suppress political opposition and freedom of speech.

Rwanda says the laws are necessary to prevent a repeat of the 1994 genocide in which 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered. The killing was only stopped when troops under current President Paul Kagame took control of the country.

But rights groups have warned that political repression has been on the increase in Rwanda, especially in the run up to presidential elections earlier in August.

In its report named Safer to Stay Silent, Amnesty International said the vague wording of the 'genocide ideology' and 'sectarianism' laws could be abused to criminalise dissent by opposition politicians, journalists and rights activists.