Witnesses say several thousand Syrian army troops, flanked by special forces, shot their way into the southern city of Daraa before dawn Monday, causing numerous casualties. Tanks reportedly began the assault, shelling the city as they moved in from four sides.
Videos distributed by human rights activists show black smoke over the city center and fires burning as shell-fire crackled in the background.
Reports say Syrian special forces stormed private homes to make arrests, Witnesses say snipers began shooting from rooftops and many victims remain lying in the streets.
Jordanian authorities said the main highway crossing between Jordan and Syria was closed to traffic and that two border posts were not allowing anyone to enter Syria.
Syrian rights activists say that security forces also encircled the Damascus suburbs of Douma and Madaamiya, arresting hundreds of people.
The crackdown came as Syrian government media condemned what was called the "crimes of armed gangs" and "outside plots to divide the country." Syrian television reported that 15 members of the army and security forces were killed in recent violence.
The sister of one such victim said on state television she was proud that her brother had died to defend his country.
She says she is the sister of martyr Nihad Ayoub, and while she is sad her brother died, she thanks God for his sacrifice.
The Syrian government daily Tishreen condemned what it called "outside media mobilization campaigns" against Syria, complaining that "freedom cannot be exercised amid chaos....without security for the country and its citizens."
But Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch in Beirut called on the United Nations to begin an independent international investigation into what he said are "abuses that have occurred in Syria in the past five weeks."
He also urged the European Union and the United States to impose sanctions on the Syrian leadership, a move the Obama administration said it is considering.
The U.N.'s top human rights official, Navi Pillay, demanded that Syria curtail its crackdown and urged a "full and independent investigation" into the killings of protesters.
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Pakistani officials say bombs have exploded near two buses carrying Navy personnel in Karachi, killing at least four people and wounding more than 50 others.
Authorities said the remote-controlled blasts Tuesday happened minutes apart in different areas of the southern port city.
No group took immediate responsibility for the attacks.
Karachi is Pakistan's economic hub and its largest city with roughly 16 million people. The city has been plagued by criminal, sectarian and militant violence.
Last week, a bomb blast at a gambling club in the Ghas Mandi area of Karachi killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 35 others. Police said they suspect criminal gangs were responsible for the attack.
Elsewhere, officials in Baluchistan province say armed men attacked a passenger bus late Monday and set it on fire, killing at least 13 people. Several women and children are among those killed in the attack.
Some information for this report was provided by AP and AFP.
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Libya has described the latest NATO airstrike on Moammar Gadhafi's compound as an assassination attempt that violates international law. The Gadhafi government and rebel representatives are holding separate talks on an African Union peace proposal.
Libya's Foreign Minister Abdelati al Obeidi Monday accused NATO of deliberately aiming missiles at Mr. Gadhafi's house in an attempt to kill him.
"This is an attempt to assassinate the leader. It is quite clear. This is against international law. They have tried this before in 1986. I think everybody should condemn this kind of raids. And stop it. Not only on the house of the leader but all over Libya," Obeidi said.
The United States has denied that the NATO strike early Monday was specifically intended to kill the Libyan leader. A White House spokesman said it is not U.S. policy to bring about regime change in Libya.
At the same time, however, the United States, France and Britain have made clear there can be no political solution until Mr. Gadhafi leaves power.
Foreign Minister Obeidi dismissed the U.S.-British-French position, saying only Libyans can settle the leadership question.
"They can say what they like, but as far as we know, in their democracy, leaders are accepted or rejected by their own people. So this is a Libyan internal matter, it has nothing to do with them. They are not authorized to say this regime is legal or not legal," he said.
The Libyan official was speaking at African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, where he is attending two days of meetings on an AU peace proposal. Representatives of the rebel Transitional National Council also are attending, but the two sides are not expected to meet face-to-face.
The so-called AU road map calls for a cease-fire leading to a negotiated settlement of the Libyan conflict. The rebels earlier rejected the proposal because it does not require Mr. Gadhafi's ouster.
But in an apparent about face, one of two rebel representatives at the Addis Ababa talks, Abdalla al Zubedi, suggested that the AU road map might serve as the basis for further discussion.
"It is a good proposal, of course. It is under study," he said.
But Zubedi bristled at a reporter's question about conditions under which the rebels might agree to a cease-fire.
"This should be addressed to the regime, not to us," Zubedi said.
Monday's session included members of an African Union ad hoc committee formed last month to seek a negotiated settlement to the Libyan conflict. Tuesday's gathering is to be a ministerial-level meeting of the AU Peace and Security Council.
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U.S. officials said Monday that more than a half-million people, most of them third-country nationals, have fled Libya since the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi's government began in February. And they say about 5,000 people are joining the exodus every day.
Officials here say the outflow is affecting all six countries bordering Libya, but with the burden failing mainly on Tunisia and Egypt.
They say that to help cope with it, the world community, led by U.N. agencies, has mounted one of the largest humanitarian airlifts in history.
Senior officials at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, who briefed reporters on Monday said an estimated 550,000 people have fled Libya since fighting began.
They said the outflow consists largely of third country nationals who had been working there, but also includes Libyans fearing for their safety, and refugees from conflicts in Sudan and Eritrea who had been given shelter by Libya.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration Reuben Brigety said that as of Monday, 117,000 people have been airlifted home to countries as far away as Bangladesh and Vietnam.
He said the charter flights, organized by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, are intended to ease the strain on Tunisia and Egypt.
"For both Tunisia and Egypt, you're talking about two countries that are both very fragile politically at the moment, that have both undergone their own recent transitions," said Brigety. "So what we've tried to do is to continue to have the air bridge maintained, so that you don't have large number of third country nationals build up in camps and create the sorts of security problems that those sorts of populations might create."
Brigety said the airlift has been partially underwritten by a $13 million U.S. contribution to the IOM, part of the overall $47 million the United States has committed to humanitarian assistance related to the Libya conflict.
That figure is separate from the $25 million in non-lethal assistance, including medical supplies, body armor and radios, the Obama administration pledged to Libyan rebels last week.
Officials here say the first U.S. food aid commitment for Libya, consisting of more than 800 tons of beans and cooking oil, arrived Monday at the Egyptian port of Alexandria for shipment to relief centers near and inside Libya.
Food and other relief supplies are being dispensed in Libya by international agencies. The State Department's Reuben Brigety said it is important that aid deliveries remain impartial and not be associated with either side in the conflict.
"The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, UNOCHA, has consistently said that they do not see a need for military support for delivery of humanitarian assistance inside Libya at this point," added Brigety. "They continue to ask for respect for the Oslo Guidelines, which call for the use of military assistance only as a last resort. And we certainly have not had any indication that humanitarian assistance will be required to be delivered under armed escorts at the moment."
USAID has a small team of officials in the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi to coordinate with the opposition Transitional National Council on aid needs in areas it controls. A senior State Department envoy, Chris Stevens, handles U.S. political contacts with the TNC.
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Ukraine is marking a grim anniversary - it was 25 years ago Tuesday when a deadly explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet state led to the worst nuclear disaster in history.
The commemoration began in the middle of the night in Kiyv when Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill struck a bell at the exact moment of the Chernobyl blast on April 26, 1986.
Patriarch Kirill and Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych also are remembering the victims with prayer and a candle-lighting ceremony. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will join them later at Chernobyl.
The Chernobyl blast was 400 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It sent a cloud of radioactive fallout into Russia, Belarus and a over a large portion of Europe.
The initial explosion killed two people. Radiation exposure killed 30 others in the following months. The World Health Organization believes that around 4,000 people eventually could die because of the accident.
The disaster fueled a non-stop global debate about the safety of nuclear energy as a power source, a debate that has gotten hotter since last month's earthquake damaged a Japanese nuclear plant.
The 1986 disaster has left a 30-kilometer area around the Chernobyl plant mainly uninhabitable, while environmentalists say fields in the surrounding area and the products grown there are still not safe and could pose a threat to human health.
Thousands of sickened workers involved in the cleanup have protested in Kyiv against cuts in the benefits and compensation they receive for their exposure to radiation. They say their monthly pensions recently were cut, leaving them barely enough money to pay for food and needed medication.
An international effort to continue to provide additional help to clean up the disaster site has fallen short of its goal. A donors conference in Kyiv last week raised more than $785 million, but that was well short of the $1.1 billion goal.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.
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Yemen's opposition coalition has agreed to participate in a transitional government under a Gulf-negotiated plan that would remove President Ali Abdullah Saleh from power after 30 days.
Opposition leaders said Monday they will take part in a national unity government after "receiving clarifications" from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council. Earlier, the coalition of seven opposition parties said it would stay out of a unity government.
The Council plan has yet to be formally accepted by the opposition or by Mr Saleh. Despite these political developments, widespread street protests continue in Yemen.
Clashes Monday between security forces and anti-government protesters left at least two of the protesters dead. Dozens of others were wounded.
Anti-government protest leaders continue to reject the Gulf Cooperation Council plan, instead demanding Mr. Saleh's immediate departure. They are opposed to a provision in the plan that grants Mr. Saleh and his family immunity from prosecution for crimes committed during his 32 years in power.
The protests have been continuing almost non-stop for the past two months.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.
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Afghan officials say Taliban insurgents have dug a tunnel to the main prison in the southern city of Kandahar, freeing more than 400 of their jailed comrades in what the Afghan government is calling a security "disaster."
Prison supervisor Ghulam Dastagir Mayar says about 475 inmates streamed out of Kandahar's Sarposa prison late Sunday into Monday, most of them Taliban militants. The escaped prisoners accounted for about one-third of the jail's population.
The Taliban says it dug a more than 300-meter long tunnel to the prison over a five-month period, bypassing government checkpoints. It says the diggers reached the prison late Sunday, enabling the inmates to escape over several hours without any guards noticing. The Taliban says the freed prisoners include 100 commanders.
Afghan presidential spokesman Waheed Omar described the jailbreak as a disastrous incident that is under investigation. Afghan authorities said they launched a search operation for the prisoners and recaptured 13 of them later in the day.
It was the second major breakout at the Sarposa prison in the past three years. In 2008, about 900 inmates, including Taliban fighters, escaped when insurgents blew open the gates with a truck bomb.
Afghan authorities upgraded security at the prison after that incident. The latest jailbreak threatens to undermine recent gains made by NATO and Afghan forces against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, just as the annual fighting season begins.
The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks has released another trove of U.S. classified documents, this time dealing with the military's detention facility for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The first batch of reports, reported by several U.S. and foreign news outlets, deal with information provided by the detainees under interrogation and the future threat that they might pose. The military also singles out links to two allied intelligence agencies as possible terrorist indicators.
Most of the latest published WikiLeaks documents are what might be called detainee personnel files. Labeled "Secret-Noforn" - meaning not to be shared with foreign intelligence agencies - they are primarily evaluations of who might be a future terrorist threat. But there are also some other supporting documents, including one potentially explosive one regarding terrorist support groups.
One lengthy document, titled "Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants," provides guidance to interrogators and other officials on what signs to look for in a potential terrorist. A list of organizations labeled "associate forces" of al-Qaida or the Taliban includes Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, and Yemen intelligence. Both have received millions of dollars in U.S. aid to fight terrorism.
The ISI has long been criticized in some quarters for alleged links to the Afghan Taliban, but Pakistan has repeatedly denied the charge. Parts of Yemen, which has recently been rocked by political instability, have been havens for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of the original group.
In the files, details are given of the information gleaned from interrogations of suspects interned at Guantanamo, including associates of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.
Former CIA officer Michael Scheuer, who once headed the unit hunting bin Laden, says that from the documents, it appears that interrogators did not get so-called "actionable intelligence" - information that would lead to attacks against terrorist targets.
"Inevitably, when you talk to someone from al-Qaida or who is associated with al-Qaida, you can elicit information that's very useful to help put the organization in context and discover how it works. Very seldom do you get any actionable intelligence. For the most part al-Qaida operatives are very proud to talk about their organization and what they've accomplished and where they see themselves in Islamic history. And from what I've read so far in these leaks that's exactly the kind of discussion that they had with many of their interrogators," he said.
Shane Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights says much of the information did not deal with al-Qaida or the Taliban at all. "A lot of the interrogations that took place over the years had nothing to do with 9-11 or terrorism. They were men who were held for years in order to get information about al-Jazeera's operations or the Uzbek intelligence service the Bahraini royal family or how the Taliban conscripted people, even though the people being interrogated were folks who said they were involuntarily conscripted by the Taliban," he said.
But Scheuer says the interrogators nevertheless got useful information. He says the documents show that, contrary to a view voiced by then-CIA director George Tenet in 2002, bin Laden was not surprised by the U.S. response to the terrorist attack in the United States of Sept. 11, 2001. And, he adds, they also add to the portrait of bin Laden and his deputies.
"The other thing that's clear, both before and after 9-11 is bin Laden is a very hands-on guy. Both he and [Ayman] al-Zawahiri and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and the rest of them were very much peripatetic (moving around on foot). They were moving around the country, meeting with people, talking about plans, and generally running the organization in a very professional manner, it appears, anyway," he said.
Mark Denbeaux, head of the Seton Hall University Center for Policy and Research, says the documents serve as the basis for detainees' continued detention. The center has done extensive research on the Guantanamo detainees and the security implications. Denbeaux says most of the nearly 800 detainees who have been held at the facility since its opening in Jan. 2002 are either innocent or low-ranking foot soldiers.
"We now know what they claim is their classified basis for their detention. But in the cases that we have sampled overnight, I would say that nothing changes the fact that the profile, really, of the detainees who were there is a profile of low-level, not very significant hangers-on, if that, in various parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan," he said.
Abdul Bagi, a farmer, was picked up near Kandahar in February 2003. According to the documents, he was deemed to be a member of the Taliban and was designated an enemy combatant by a U.S. "combatant status review" in 2004. But, according to another document, he was assessed to be a low risk in May 2005. It noted he cannot read, cannot write except for his own name, and did not know what "jihad" means but believed it to be something carried out by soldiers and the Afghan government. It says he was picked up for wearing a green jacket like Taliban who had attacked U.S. forces.
Published reports say that after three years in captivity, he was flown back to Afghanistan in Feb. 2006.
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Almost 25,000 troops fanned out along Japan's devastated northeast coast Monday in a grim search for some of the thousands of bodies still missing since a March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Dozens of aircraft, boats and navy divers took part in the two-day search, the third and most intensive of its kind since the twin disasters washed away whole towns and villages more than six weeks ago.
More than 14,300 bodies have been recovered since the 9.0-magnitude earthquake, the strongest ever recorded in Japan. Almost 12,000 more people are still unaccounted for, and authorities fear many were carried out to sea by the wave.
The government also sent veterinarians for the first time into the 20-kilometer exclusion zone around the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant to inspect the condition of thousands of abandoned farm animals.
Dead livestock will be sprayed with lime to prevent the spread of disease, and the dying will be slaughtered with the permission of their owners.
On Friday, the government approved an initial budget of $50 billion for quake recovery, with additional funds expected to be announced in June.
The first funding package will pay to build temporary housing for the homeless, and to start cleanup efforts.
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As World Malaria Day is observed worldwide April 25, VOA takes a look at Malindi, a city on Kenya's coast that is fighting malaria through community action.
As the world works to eliminate malaria deaths by 2015, sub-Saharan Africa is still struggling to confront the continent's number-one killer of children under the age of five years old.
In Malindi, the fight against malaria is a community affair. The city of about 150,000 is on Kenya's coast, in one of the country's two hotspots for the disease. For residents of Malindi, malaria not only is a threat to their lives and their children, it is a threat to their livelihoods.
The coastal city is a popular destination for Italian beachgoers, and its economy is based almost entirely on tourism. The threat of losing those tourists is a constant reality for the resorts and restaurants in the region.
Fighting malaria in Kenya is a challenge, with the potent, but controversial, chemical DDT banned by the government. So when members of the Malindi community sought to tackle the problem, they realized they would need to involve the city's residents.
"There was the malaria," said Kazungu Tuva, chairman of PUMMA, a community organization dedicated to eradicating malaria in Malindi. "It was in a high risk of killing people. Many people were dying, mostly children under five and pregnant mothers. So as the community, we saw there is something we can do to volunteer so that we can assist in fighting malaria. So that we organized the community and we set groups."
PUMMA was founded in 2002 by a coalition of local organizations. The name is short for "Punguza Umbu Sahau Malaria," a Swahili phrase that means "Eradicate Mosquitos, Forget Malaria."
To that end, PUMMA employs a number of Mosquito Scouts - residents who look for mosquito breeding sites in assigned areas throughout Malindi. The Mosquito Scouts work closely with PUMMA and Kenya's Ministry of Health to report mosquitos and deliver samples for testing.
Riziki Ramadhani, a mother of four who has been a malaria scout for five years, said, "We are doing neighborhood campaigns, we are going to the villages and the school clubs. Sometimes we do door-to-door and sometimes we make a baraza [community gathering]. We are taught the importance of controlling malaria and to sleep under a treated net and to keep the environment in good condition."
The work of the Mosquito Scouts is financed by the Swiss organization Biovision. Each scout is paid about $90 per month for their work. For Ramadhani, being a Mosquito Scout has been an important opportunity for her and her children.
"When we spray, we finish and we collect the adult mosquito then we record them," said Ramadhani. "The work is fine. I've sent my children to schools."
The scouts also have introduced innovative methods for reducing mosquito reproduction. The most effective has been the use of small fish in ponds and pools to eat the larvae of breeding mosquitos. The deputy director of the Kenya Medical Research Institute, Dr. Charles Mbogo, explains how the strategy was developed.
"The idea came from the Mosquito Scouts after scouting for mosquito larvae in the hotel industry," he said. "Most of the hotels industry have these fish and when they sample that all the time there is no mosquito. They were asking us why and we informed them that actually the fish do eat the larvae. So they started introducing them into some of the areas where there were no fish and immediately we started seeing a big decline in the mosquito populations."
The work of PUMMA and the Mosquito Scouts has proven effective in recent years. Data from the Malindi District - which includes the city and its surrounding areas - shows a 20 percent drop in malaria cases reported from 2006 until 2010. But there is still much work to be done. More than 100,000 malaria cases were reported last year, and more than 40,000 were children under 5 years old.
One of the largest challenges is the hundreds of pools sitting behind the gates of Malindi's resorts and vacation villas. As Mbogo explains, many of the city's wealthier residents live there for part of the year, leaving behind large empty pools which become breeding grounds during the rainy seasons.
"It's a big problem. We have what we call the abandoned swimming pools. That means nobody lives there. Now they have been left with water there and the mosquitos breed there. So we need to do something about that," said Mbogo.
There are more than 400 private cottages and villas owned by part-time residents of Malindi. PUMMA has begun to reach out to these residents, who are slowly beginning to take part in the group's efforts. While PUMMA and the Mosquito Scouts have access to some vacation homes and resorts for testing and mosquito reduction, many more remain locked for much of the year.
But PUMMA is not giving up. On April 9, Malindi celebrated its 8th annual Mosquito Day. Local students, non-governmental organizations, health officials and Mosquito Scouts marched through the city singing songs and encouraging the community to take part in the fight against malaria.
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The White House on Monday condemned the disclosure of hundreds of U.S. military documents originally obtained by the website WikiLeaks that detail secret reports about more than 700 people held since 2002 at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Information about people held at Guantanamo Bay was contained in Detainee Assessment Briefs written by the Department of Defense between 2002 and 2009.
The documents originally were obtained by WikiLeaks. Reports on their contents were published by several news organizations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Daily Telegraph newspapers, and National Public Radio.
According to The New York Times, the briefs show that a third of those who left Guantanamo Bay were classified as "high risk" before they were released or handed over to other governments.
The White House says the briefs were among sources of information used by a special task force created by President Barack Obama in 2009. The panel reviewed which detainees at Guantanamo could be prosecuted or held indefinitely, and recommended which could be released to their home countries or third countries.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated what the Obama administration has said about previous WikiLeaks disclosures, saying that is "unfortunate" that news organizations decided to publish documents that were obtained illegally.
Carney said the publication of the briefs, in his words, "does not make them new to us." He stressed that the conclusions in the documents were not necessarily the same as those made by the government's Guantanamo review task force.
"You should not assume that the conclusions of that task force were the same as the conclusions in those briefs about individual detainees," said Carney. "I think that is an important point to make because a Detainee Assessment Brief in 2006 may or may not be reflective of the administration, the government's view of that detainee in 2011."
A joint statement by the Department of Defense and the State Department says newer detainee assessments made by the Guantanamo Bay Review Task Force in 2009 remain secret.
There are 172 detainees in U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay. About 600 people were transferred out since the facility opened in 2002, during former President George W. Bush's administration.
White House Press Secretary Carney said President Obama remains committed to closing the facility. Last month, the administration announced the resumption of military trials for detainees after a two-year freeze, during which it ran into political obstacles to holding civilian trials for detainees in the United States.
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The former head of the Organizing Committee of the Commonwealth Games, Suresh Kalmadi, was taken into custody Monday after being summoned for questioning by federal police.
A spokeswoman for the Central Bureau of Investigation, Dharini Mishra, said Kalmadi has been arrested for allegedly favoring a Swiss firm which was awarded a contract for timers and scoring equipment.
"It is alleged that the officials of the organizing committee had conspired with representatives of the private firm in Switzerland and the contract for timing, scoring result was awarded by wrongfully restricting and eliminating competition from other suppliers in a premeditated and planned manner," said Mishra.
Kalmadi was removed from his post as head of the organizing committee of the Commonwealth Games in January. He is the third senior official to be arrested in connection with graft related to the sporting event, which was held in New Delhi last October.
Kalmadi, who is a lawmaker of the ruling Congress Party, has consistently said he is innocent.
The Commonwealth Games were the biggest sporting spectacle India had staged in 30 years, and were expected to mark a high point in the country's emergence on the global stage. But the event turned into a huge national embarrassment as charges of large-scale corruption, delays, poor organization and shoddy work at sporting venues dominated headlines. The event cost six billion dollars - far higher than original estimates. There are complaints that nearly a third of the money may have been misappropriated.
Amid an angry outcry by the public and opposition parties, the government promised to investigate graft charges and punish the guilty.
After Kalmadi's arrest, a spokesperson for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, Nirmala Sitharaman, said investigations should be fast-tracked to nab all those guilty.
"Others who are involved and others who are probably till now not even named, bigger more influential people who had a role to play in this, should all be brought to book," said Sitharaman.
The charges of widespread graft related to the organization of the Games turned the spotlight on corruption in India involving billions of dollars. In the months since, an even bigger scandal involving the possible loss of 36 billion dollars to government revenues due to the sale of telecom spectrum at lower-than-market prices has dominated headlines.
The charges of widespread corruption have placed the Congress-led government on the defensive, and put pressure on the government to enact a tough anti-corruption law.
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Turkey already bans more websites than any other European country. Now the government is set to introduce new controls that officials say are needed to protect children. Critics fear they represent an effort control the web.
The Turkish government calls its new Internet controls Safe Use of the Internet. They are scheduled to take effect in August and will require all Internet users to choose from one of four filter profiles operated by their server provider. Law Professor Yamman Akdeniz at Bilgi University in Istanbul says the measures open the door to government censorship of the Internet.
"We are concerned that the government [will] enforce and develop a censorship infrastructure," said Akdeniz. "Even the standard profile is a filter system and the problem is government mandated, government controlled and there are no other countries within the EU or Council of Europe that has a similar system. And the decision also states if anyone who tries to circumvent the system, further action may be taken."
Government officials say the new regulations are needed to protect families, particularly children, from pornography. But critics say it is unclear which websites can be banned and for what reasons, and the regulations can also be used to silence political websites. Nadire Mater is the head of the Turkish human-rights web page Bianet.
"Depending on the government, depending on the ministers, one can be put on the blacklist," said Mater. "This is not a democracy. We've experienced this before, because police, from time to time, they distributed these blacklists, and in some Internet cafes or companies we were getting the complaints from the visitors they were saying that we don't have any access [to] Bianet."
Bianet criticizes the government for establishing the new measures by decree, rather than by a vote in parliament and is challenging the new controls in court. Web freedom is a concern within the European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join. EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule stressed those concerns before the EU parliament earlier this year.
"Freedom of press means guaranteeing a public space for free debate, including on the Internet," said Fule. "The European Parliament's draft resolution rightly underlines these issues."
That concern centers on Turkey's record of courts banning more websites than any other European country. In 2009, the state stopped releasing figures, but the latest number is believed to be in excess of 12,000. Again, Professor Akdeniz.
"Several thousands web sites have been blocked," said Akdeniz. "And although the government claims that they predominantly block access to pornographic websites, several hundred alternative-media websites, especially websites dealing with the Kurdish debate, are blocked access to for political reasons."
Andrea Barron is performing an annual ritual: lighting two candles for a Passover Seder, the ceremonial retelling of the ancient Israelites' exodus from slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago. The traditional elements are all in place - including the Seder plate which holds unleavened bread, green vegetables, bitter herbs and a shank bone.
However, what is unusual about the evening's Seder is that it is taking place in the basement of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), a mosque outside of Washington, D.C.
Rizwan Jaka, board member and chair of the interfaith committee at ADAMS, sees it as a natural fit.<!--IMAGE-->
"There's commonality. We all believe in the freedom that's the message of the exodus, that God saved Prophet Moses and his people from the pharaoh," says Jaka. "The striving for freedom is something that is important for everyone."
It's the third time the Sterling, Virginia mosque has hosted the event and an air of friendly, mutual respect is evident. Barron arranges the seating so that Muslims and Jews alternate, which results in them sitting next to each other. Before the ceremony, Jaka welcomes participants with the Jewish greeting, "Shalom."
"This is a large mosque. It is one of the largest mosques in the country. Mohamed Majid, the imam, is the president of ISNA, the Islamic Society of North America," says Barron, who leads the Seder. "So these are not sort of marginal Muslims. These are mainstream Muslims who are holding a Passover Seder in a mosque." <!--IMAGE-->
ADAMS has 10 branches in the area, serving 5,000 families. Its leaders have publicly condemned terrorism, extremism and violence while working with law enforcement and the FBI. Recent counter-radicalization seminars at ADAMS attracted several hundred people.
During the evening, the group raises a glass – filled with grape juice instead of wine in deference to the Muslims in attendance – to this particular Seder's three main themes: the struggle for Israeli-Palestinian peace, countering Islamophobia and the struggle of the Arab people for freedom and democracy.
The message is not lost on Kay Halpern, a Jewish woman who attended the event. "It's very important for Jews and Muslims, Jews and Arabs, including Palestinians, to break bread together and to get to know each because when people know each other as other human beings, they don't see people in terms of stereotypes and they view the world less in terms of us versus them," she says. <!--IMAGE-->
The universality and timelessness of the Passover message resonate for Egyptian-American participant Mokhtar Kamal. "There are a lot of Arabs who really want democratization. The leadership of the revolution in Egypt, many of them were upper middle class. They didn't need money. What they needed was freedom."
Barron's group, Washington Area Jews for Jewish-Muslim Understanding, has been conducting interfaith events like this one since 2002.
She acknowledges it is a small organization. But her goal is for the message to strike a chord with the larger population of Muslims and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians.
"We support two states based on the 1967 borders. We're not anti-Israel," she notes. "We're not anti-Zionist. We are very connected to Israel but we also strongly support Israeli-Palestinian peace. And another important theme…because there's been so much discrimination against Jews, we think Jews should be in the forefront of countering the hatred that we see growing in our country against Muslims."
ADAMS' imam, Mohamed Majid, hopes to make a habit of these kinds of gatherings. In fact, he imagines a reciprocal event during the upcoming month of Ramadan, when an area synagogue might host iftar, the meal for Muslims to break the fast.
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Officials in south Sudan say more than 150 people have been killed in clashes between the region's army and two separate rebel militias.
Army officials say one militia, led by Gabriel Tanginya, surrendered late Sunday after a fierce gunbattle a day earlier. Army spokesman Malaak Ayuen said 57 rebels and seven solders died in the battle.
Officials say Tanginya's militia was being integrated into the army when an argument broke out, sparking the clash in Jonglei state.
Ayuen said more than 100 people died in separate fighting between soldiers and a rebel group led by former general Peter Gadet.
Ayuen said that fighting took place over several days last week as Gadet's men tried to seize towns in Mayom county, in Unity state. Both sides claimed the upper hand in the fighting. Gadet's militia said it killed hundreds of army soldiers.
Hundreds have died in fighting across southern Sudan since January, when the region voted to split from the north. Southern leaders have accused the north of backing the rebellions to destabilize the region ahead of independence in July.
Northern and southern Sudan fought a 21-year civil war that ended with a 2005 peace agreement.
The sides are still trying to resolve issues over borders and the fate of the oil-producing Abyei region, which sits on the north-south border.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.
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Nigerian police say a bomb blast in northeastern Nigeria has killed at least three people and wounded 14 ahead of state-wide elections. Nigerian police believe the Easter Sunday blast in the city of Maiduguri is the work of the Islamic group Boko Haram, which has been fighting for the past two years to establish an Islamic state in northern Nigeria.
In a statement released earlier Sunday, the group defended its attacks on police and religious leaders saying they are wrongly associating themselves with a federal government that the group says is trying to sabotage Islam.
Earlier this year, Boko Haram claimed responsibility for killing a gubernatorial candidate in Borno state.
But these bombings appear unrelated to last week's violence in northern states when supporters of defeated presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari attacked churches, homes and police stations, sparking reprisal attacks by Christians. Mr. Buhari says President Jonathan's election was rigged.
A human rights group, the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, says at least 500 people were killed in that violence.
Nigeria's Emergency Management Agency says the states of Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi, Adamawa, Niger, and Katsina were the hardest hit. Director-General Mohammed Sani Sidi says his agency is helping more than 21,000 displaced civilians in Kano, nearly 10,000 displaced civilians in Zaria, and people at more than 100 camps for displaced civilians in Kaduna.
"The intervention is continuing. We are not going to stop until we get this relief material across to all the victims that have been affected. We are doing everything possible in collaboration with the Nigerian army who have been very, very active and supportive in providing us with security cover," Sidi said.
With more than 65,000 civilians displaced nationwide, Sidi says the only real answer is finishing this series of elections with peaceful state-wide voting to restore order. "What we are trying to achieve is to make sure that peace is maintained and restored in all these places so that people can go back to their various houses and the continue with their normal lives," Sidi added.
Twenty-six of Nigeria's 36 states are scheduled to hold state-wide elections Tuesday. Voting in Kaduna and Bauchi has been delayed until Thursday. Electoral commission chief Attahiru Jega says he hopes that will allow for the "further cooling of tempers and for the security situation in those states to continue to improve."
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A NATO airstrike in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, has destroyed at least one public building in a complex where Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi lives.
At least two large bombs rocked the compound area Monday in the Bab al-Aziziya complex, located in the city's center. NATO says it targeted a communications headquarters used to coordinate attacks against civilians.
Libyan officials, however, say the strike was an attempt to assassinate Mr. Gadhafi.
Reporters have been unable to verify casualties. A Libyan government spokesman ((Mussa Ibrahim)) says the strike killed three people and wounded 45, but says Mr. Gadhafi remains alive and "in high spirits."
Authorities say the bombed building was used for ministerial gatherings and other meetings.
The Libyan leader's whereabouts at the time of the raid are not clear.
The attack comes as fighting continued in the western rebel-held city of Misrata.
NATO said Monday its aircraft had destroyed multiple-rocket launchers, tanks and bunkers in and around Misrata, Tripoli and Sirte in the last two days.
Government troops unleashed a barrage of rockets there on Sunday, despite a government claim that it had halted operations against rebel fighters there.
Heavy shelling and gunfire in Misrata has left hundreds dead in two months of a bloody government siege. Doctors say at least 32 people have been killed in fighting since Saturday.
CNN reports that a Libyan government spokesman explained the latest deaths by saying the army came under rebel attack as it withdrew from Misrata. He said troops just were fighting back as they continued to withdraw.
Libyan Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim had said on Sunday troops halted their offensive in Misrata so that tribal elders could negotiate with the rebels.
Meanwhile, British defense officials say Defense Secretary Liam Fox is traveling to the U.S. Monday to discuss the Libyan conflict with his American counterpart, Robert Gates.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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As uprisings in the Middle East have spread in recent months, one key Persian Gulf country - Bahrain - has become the scene of demonstrations demanding greater political freedoms. But the situation in Bahrain is not entirely internal.
The Gulf Cooperation Council - a coalition of key Persian Gulf states - has weighed in on one side of the turmoil, with Iran speaking up on the other. The rhetoric has increasingly hardened, as both sides seek to influence what happens there.
Thousands of Bahrainis took to the streets starting in mid-February, demanding reforms to make the kingdom's Sunni-dominated government more representative, and its economy more inclusive, for the majority Shiite population.
Then, in mid-March, the Gulf Cooperation Council, led by Saudi Arabia, rolled a military force into Manama at the invitation of the ruling al-Khalifa family. Bahrain's government said it was to ensure stability.
The Bahraini government and other Arab states quickly blamed Iran for the provocations that had triggered GCC assistance. Speaking in Washington on April 19, Bahraini Finance Minister Ahmed al-Khalifa called on Tehran to stop.
"In terms of Iran, you have seen their announcements," said al-Khalifa. "We feel that what happens in Bahrain is for the Bahraini people to reach consensus on, and to resolve. And, Iran is our neighbor, but we think that what has happened has to be resolved within Bahrain.
But Jean-Francois Seznec at Georgetown University discounts the Iranian influence. "The al-Khalifa family right now, [in Washington, as we speak] are distributing all manners of information saying that Iran was behind all of this [unrest]. And, this is a conspiracy [by Iran] that has been going on for 20-30 years. The fact is, in my own experience anyway, tells me that the Shi'a feel Bahraini - they don't feel Iranian. They don't really like Iran. The Shi'a in Bahrain are mostly Arabs. They're not Persian."
The GCC's military move into Bahrain reverberated throughout - and polarized - the region. Arab countries, especially those in the GCC, praised the Saudi-led incursion. Iran strongly condemned it. At the Middle East Institute in Washington, Analyst Alex Vatanka said the GCC action reframed Iran's position.
"At the outset, when the unrest in Bahrain began, we actually witnessed, on the Iranian side in terms of rhetoric, [Iran] was very much attempting to portray what was going on in Bahrain, as [being] between the government - the al-Khalifa family - and the people," said Vatanka. "The people were not cast as Sunnis or Shi'a - they were just simply referred to as the people. All this changed overnight, as soon as we saw the 1,500 or so Saudi troops wander down the causeway [linking Saudi Arabia and Bahrain], followed by troops from the Emirates and Qatar later on. Suddenly, we saw the narrative coming from Tehran playing up the Shi'a identity of the Bahrainis."
Iran has traditionally seen both the Persian Gulf and the region's Shiite population to be within its sphere of influence. It continues to express that attitude today as the region is in turmoil - according to former State Department official Graeme Bannerman.
"The Iranians see themselves as the dominant force, the natural dominant force in the [Persian] Gulf region," said Bannerman. "And, they will do all they can to assert their dominance in the region. It goes back to the beginning of the U.A.E. [United Arab Emirates], when they siezed the Greater and Lesser Tumbs, and Abu Mussa [islands.] Now, if you are sitting in Bahrain, with that precedent, you have to say 'That makes me nervous.' Whether that is legitimate or not, that makes them [the ruling al-Khalifa family] nervous."
The rhetoric has heated up. Recently, al-Arabiyah TV reported that Kuwaiti parliamentarian Muhammad Hayif had not only called on the GCC to liberate the Tumbs and Abu Mussa islands in the Gulf from Iran, but also had called for the break-away of Iran's heavily Arab Khuzestan region. Vatanka said both sides have plenty to lose from such provocations.
"One day, they want dialogue. [The] next day, they want to go and, sort of, fund secessionist movements in one another's countries. Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and a number of the other [GCC] states are also open to potential Iranian overtures to groups that operate in those countries that are, perhaps, looking for patronage [support]. Again, this is not going to be a situation where one country can said to be the winner, and others will be losing. This is going to be win-and-loss across the board for all of these states," said Vatanka.
The Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where much of that country's oil production lies, is heavily Shiite. Riyadh worries that Iran, if provoked by secessionist efforts, may try to incite turmoil. And, Tehran knows that the Saudis would likely defend the Eastern Province.
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Tibetan exiles held demonstrations in front of Chinese embassies in several countries Monday to mark the 22nd birthday of the 11th Panchen Lama, a Tibetan Buddhist religious figure whose whereabouts remain unknown after Chinese authorities took him into custody 16 years ago.
Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was six years old when he was taken into custody in 1995, shortly after Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, recognized him as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. Since then, the boy and his family have not been seen in public. Tibetan activists are calling for his release.
China has said several times over the years that the young man is safe and in Tibet, and does not want to be disturbed.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances said that China's detention of the Panchen Lama is one of the oldest involuntary disappearance cases in the country.
Tibetan rights groups say Monday's rallies also were to protest what they say is Chinese police crackdown near the Kirti monastery in an ethnically Tibetan area of Sichuan province. The area has seen several protests since last month, when a young monk set himself on fire to protest Beijing's Tibet policies. Activists say at least two Tibetans have died since then after being beaten by the police.
China's Communist Party government says conditions around the monastery are normal, but foreign journalists are rarely allowed to enter Tibetan areas, so the situation can not be independently verified.
The crackdown at the Kirti monastery comes as China increasingly suppresses dissent. Security officials have detained scores of rights activists, lawyers, writers and artists in recent months. Political analysts say the government wants to make sure the so-called Jasmine Revolution sweeping the Middle East this year does spread to China and lead to efforts to oust the government.
Beijing says the Dalai Lama is seeking to create an independent Tibet, and in 1995 Chinese authorities named their own Panchen Lama, Gyaltsen Norbu, to counter the Dalai Lama's influence. Gyaltsen Norbu has been made a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, one of the country's highest political bodies.
Most exiled Tibetans do not recognize him. Many Tibetans are angry about Chinese rule and what they say are Beijing's efforts to suppress their traditions and religion. In 2008, Tibet was rocked by violent protests, and the government ramped up security in the region.
China has repeatedly denied any discrimination and points to laws it says help ethnic minorities, such as allowing families to have more than one child. Beijing also says its development projects have improved Tibetan living standards in recent decades.
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Aid workers and observers in Somalia say an increasing number of child soldiers are being used by factions involved in the escalating violence in the country. They say most of the children are recruited or abducted by the militant Islamic group al-Shabab and suffer horrendous experiences on the battlefield.
The United Nations children's agency, UNICEF, estimates that thousands of children as young as 10 years old are involved in the fighting.
Isabella Castrogiovanni, head of the child protection unit at UNICEF Somalia, says the militant Islamic group al-Shabab recruits most of the minors.
She says the group gets children from schools, villages, and other communities, increasingly by force. She says that in one campaign, al-Shabab officials pressure families to hand over at least one of their children.
Once in the ranks, Castrogiovanni says children and other recruits have mobile phones containing short video clips to motivate them to fight. She describes one clip that she has seen.
"It's basically one al-Shabab fighter who died and there are many people around him including very young people, and there is somebody who is sitting next to the body and just saying, you know, repeating over and over again, this person [who] has died is a martyr, he has died for the cause, he will go to heaven, and then again this mantra of the infidels, the jihad, the obligation to fight for the jihad, and so on," said Castrogiovanni.
She says Somalia's government, commonly called the TFG, also uses minors. Castrogiovanni says she thinks this is mostly because the TFG does not have proper structures and procedures to determine the real age of recruits.
"I mean, we are not talking of a national army the way other countries do have a national army, meaning a very structured, controlled, centralized, and everybody is registered," she added. "There are several militia groups which are loosely associated with the TFG but maybe they are not accountable to the central TFG command structure."
It is rare that al-Shabab talks to the press. There have been many independent reports of the group recruiting child soldiers.
Somali Ambassador to Kenya Mohamed Ali Nur tells VOA the the Somali government has a strict policy of not using child soldiers.
"We have [a] committee in the forces who [are] just making sure that soldiers, if recruited, that they [committee] check how old [is] that boy or girl, and make sure that they are not underage," said nur.
In recent months, fighting has intensified between al-Shabab and the TFG. The United States considers al-Shabab a terrorist group linked to al-Qaida. The TFG was formed years ago through an international process to bring stability to the volatile country.
The African Union Mission in Somalia, AMISOM, has contributed troops to help stabilize the country and protect the government against al-Shabab attacks.
AMISOM spokesman Major Barigye Bahoku tells VOA most of the child soldiers his troops encounter say they were kidnapped by al-Shabab from Islamic schools and forced to fight. He says some parents who ask about their children or try to rescue them are killed.
Major Bahoku says at least three children every month surrender to AMISOM. He says the children describe horrific experiences.
" ...witnessing their comrades dying on the front line, how they are buried in shallow graves, how those who try to defect or run away are killed," he said. "It's a horrendous situation."
Major Bahoku says his troops also encounter children firing on the battlefield.
"We try the best we can under the circumstances," he said. "If we are able to identify that these are underage children, we will possibly give them preference and maybe shout orders out to them to put down their guns and run away. Unfortunately we have got a language barrier problem."
UNICEF Somalia's Castrogiovanni says when children are in the line of fire, they are killed, maimed, or captured and jailed, with some lucky ones escaping. She says this is, in her words, "the worst one can imagine."
Somalia has been at war since dictator Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991.
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A Bangladeshi government probe has cleared Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus of misappropriating aid funds at the microfinance bank he founded.
The winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize had been under scrutiny since a Norwegian documentary accused him of transferring aid money from his Grameen bank to other projects without proper approval.
But Monday, Bangladesh's Finance Minister ((Abul Mal Abdul Muhith)) said that a committee appointed by the government has found no evidence of financial irregularities.
Yunus is an economist and founder of the Grameen Bank, which provides microcredit (small loans to poor people) to help its clients establish creditworthiness and financial self-sufficiency.
Yunus is still seeking redress for the government's decision to fire him as the bank's managing director, because he had overstayed the official retirement age of 60 years.
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A group of internationally prominent figures, known as the Elders, is seeking to ease tensions on the Korean peninsula and draw attention to the ongoing food shortages in North Korea with a trip to Pyongyang.
Former South African president and Nobel Peace Laureate Nelson Mandela founded the Elders in 2007. The group is made up of global leaders who no longer hold public office and who work together to support peace and human rights.
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Former American president and Nobel Peace Laureate Jimmy Carter is leading this Elders delegation to Pyongyang.
"We received our invitation from the top leaders in North Korea, and I can't identify which ones, I don't think that's important. But the Elders, as a group, were asked to come, to learn what we can about the situation of humanitarian concerns on the ground."
Carter spoke to journalists in Beijing Monday. He said the delegation also will discuss North Korea's nuclear program in meetings with leaders in Pyongyang.
"The Elders are not in a position to negotiate, we're not mediators. We're going to learn what we can and share what we find with the leaders with whom we have contact in the future," he said.
Carter said he is not sure who his group will meet with in Pyongyang, but said he would welcome meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il or his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un.
Tensions have risen on the Korean peninsula since a suspected North Korean torpedo sank a South Korean warship about a year ago and since the North shelled a South Korean island late last year.
China has been actively pushing for a resumption of six-party talks on the Korean peninsula, which have not been held for two years.
Other Elders on the trip include Gro Bruntland, the former prime minister of Norway and former head of the World Health Organization, as well as former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who is also a Nobel Peace laureate.
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Elder Mary Robinson is a former president of Ireland and the first United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. She says food shortages and malnutrition in North Korea are a major concern.
"There are about three point five million [children] who are vulnerable, who face, potentially, very severe food shortage. They're now lowering the calorie intake for the population, below what is really tolerable for a population, and we're really concerned about it," Robinson said.
The Elders go to Pyongyang Tuesday, and then to Seoul on Thursday.
When Carter visited Pyongyang in August, he brought back an American citizen detained there for illegal entry. There are hopes this time he can secure the release of a Korean-American who is being held in North Korea for illegal religious activities.
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