The Canadian Press: The trafficking and sexual exploitation of children in Afghanistan is a growing concern, Canada's Foreign Affairs Department was told in a confidential human-rights report prepared by senior officials. The illegal marriage of underage girls and the sexual abuse of young boys is commonplace, warned the Afghanistan Human Rights Report obtained by The Canadian Press under access-to-information laws. "Sexual violence is commonly reported but remains difficult to verify," said the partially censored review, written last summer.      Full news...

IWPR: America pledges to reduce price paid by civilians in war against Taliban, but disputes Afghan estimates for Farah airstrike death toll. Sayed Karim, 72, is now all alone. The elderly, white bearded man bowed his turbaned head as he told of the 13 members of his family who were killed in a May 4 airstrike by United States forces in Farah province, on Afghanistan’s western border. “I am no longer young,” he sighed. “I cannot build a new life.”      Full news...

Reporters Without Borders: Radio journalist Zakia Zaki’s murder two years ago tomorrow is still unpunished and her husband assures Reporters Without Borders that the lack of progress with the investigation is almost certainly due to the influence of the murder’s masterminds. The director of Sada-e-Solh (Peace Radio), Zaki was gunned down in her home in Jabalussaraj, in the northern province of Parwan, on 6 June 2007.      Full news...

MSNBC: Should detainees the United States has shipped to the Bagram air base in Afghanistan have the same constitutional right to challenge their detention in court that prisoners at the Guantanamo prison in Cuba have been given? President Barack Obama didn't answer that question in a May 21 speech outlining his policy for dealing with alleged terrorists. In fact, Obama didn't mention Bagram at all.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Millions of people living in southern and eastern Afghanistan, terrorized by the Taliban, other insurgent groups and local militias ostensibly allied with the government, suffered insecurity that further restricted their already limited access to food, health care, and schooling. Indiscriminate attacks, abductions and the targeting of civilians reached unprecedented levels. The Taliban and other anti-government groups significantly expanded their attacks to cover more than a third of the country, including areas once considered relatively safe in the centre and the north.      Full news...

The Guardian: British pilots in Afghanistan are firing an increasing number of "enhanced blast" thermobaric weapons, designed to kill everyone in buildings they strike, the Ministry of Defence has revealed. Since the start of this year more than 20 of the US-designed missiles, which have what is officially described as a "blast fragmentation warhead", have been fired by pilots of British Apache attack helicopters. A total of 20 were also fired last year after they were bought by the MoD from the Americans last May.      Full news...

Reuters: An Afghan who has spent over six years at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison was only around 12 years old when he was detained, not 16 or 17 as his official record says, an Afghan rights group said on Tuesday. Interviews with the family of Mohammed Jawad, who like many poor Afghans does not know his exact age or birthday, showed he was probably not even a teenager when he was arrested in 2002, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said.      Full news...

AFP: The Afghan government is planning curbs on Internet use, starting with blocking pornography sites, as the country's first fiber optic cable is due to be on-line in weeks, officials said Sunday. The communications and information ministries are studying limits on web access because the current "free Internet environment" is being misused in particular by the youth, communications ministry spokesman Abdul Hadi told AFP.      Full news...

MADRE: Women in Afghanistan are routinely denied basic human rights, including education, healthcare, freedom from violence, and freedom of movement. Afghan women who fight to change this reality are attacked and even assassinated by ultra-conservatives. Meanwhile, US airstrikes that kill civilians further endanger Afghan women and their families. They also increase the power of the Taliban and other reactionary forces as more Afghans turn to them for protection from the United States.      Full news...

PAN: A teenage mother was stabbed to death by her in-laws in northwestern Faryab province on Wednesday what appears to be a result of domestic violence, officials said Thursday. Raheela, 18, who died from multiple stab wounds was the mother of one who got married four years ago, women affairs director in Faryab, Sharifa Azimi told PAN. Raheela's family members charged her father-in-law for killing her.      Full news...

VOA News: NATO says an airstrike by one of its warplanes has killed eight civilians in southern Afghanistan, in the midst of a controversy over civilian casualties. The NATO-led international military force on Wednesday said its troops called in the airstrike Tuesday in Helmand province after a clash with about 25 insurgents. A NATO statement accused the militants of using the civilians as human shields.      Full news...

Quqnoos: Foreign troops gunned down a local farmer Monday in Pushtrod District of the western Farah province, an official said. The US convoy opened fire on the farmer when he war irrigating his farms early Monday morning in the district, north of the provincial capital city. Bilqees Roshan, a provincial council member said the body of the farmers is flamed.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: NATO forces in Afghanistan should immediately release the results of their investigation into a March 14, 2009, incident in which an 8-year-old girl in Kapisa province was burned by white phosphorus munitions, Human Rights Watch said today. A NATO spokesperson has denied allegations from the girl's father that NATO forces had fired the rounds that caused her injuries.      Full news...

The Sunday Times: When civilians get killed in conflicts in Sudan, Zimbabwe or Sri Lanka, the United Nations predictably raises hell. But when civilians are victims of domestic insurgencies or military conflicts involving the five big powers -- the US, Britain, France, China and Russia (plus Israel) -- the Security Council invariably remains silent or paralysed.      Full news...

AFP: Hundreds of Kabul University students labelled the United States "the world's biggest terrorist" on Sunday as they protested against US air strikes said to have killed scores of Afghan villagers. Chanting "Death to America", "Death to the biggest terrorist" and "long live Islam", up to 1,000 protesters marched outside the university to condemn what is believed to be the deadliest such incident in nearly eight years.      Full news...

Quqnoos: The tiny roads of the Afghan village do not witness the cheer of kids, the muddy houses are destroyed and the survival villagers even cannot find a place to mourn the victims of the fatal air-raid. It’s incredibly harsh to tolerate a second in Geranai, a remote village in Bala-Buluk district of the western Farah province, where the green rural area is heavily bombed and single smiling face can hardly be seen. One or two are remaining from a family of 10 to 15 members and the village is mourning the deaths, exceeding 100.      Full news...

The Independent: Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as "human shields" by the Taliban and we shall say that we "deeply regret" innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it's all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of the Bala Boluk district in western Farah province on Tuesday claimed more than one hundred 'innocent people' have been killed in the Monday's air offensive by the US forces. The air-strike in Bala Boluk district came after an insurgent attack on a police check post that killed six people and three others on spy charges on Sunday.      Full news...

Reuters: The U.N. mission head in Afghanistan begged President Hamid Karzai not to name as his running mate an ex-guerrilla chief linked to accusations of human rights abuses but was ignored, a diplomatic source close to him said on Monday. Karzai registered to run for re-election on Monday and named former vice president and defence minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim to stand with him as the senior of two vice presidents.      Full news...

Xinhua: One Afghan civilian was killed and two others sustained injuries as they came under fire of international troops in west Afghanistan Sunday morning, police said. "This morning a civilian car from Farah was heading to Herat province but was fired upon by the international troops on the road linking airport to Gazara district, as a result a 12-year-oldgirl was killed," Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, police in western region.      Full news...

Asia Times: Nearly 30 years after their first foray into the land-locked buffer state, married couple and journalist-historians Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould could not have chosen a more appropriate time to publish their comprehensive Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story. A chronically disinformed US public should leap at the chance to familiarize themselves with an honest overview of their country's historically scandalous involvement in the region.      Full news...

RAWA News: The first 100 days of a new administration in Washington is always a time for comment and speculation about the future. It is an American tradition dating back to Franklin Roosevelt's tenure in 1933 during the Great Depression. But my focus here is upon what has the arrival of the Obama administration meant not within the United States, but rather for the everyday life of common Afghans.      Full news...

PAN: A father murdered his daughter and her paramour for their alleged involvement in an adulterous affair in the Timoryan village of Baghlan-i-Markazi district of northern Baghlan province on Tuesday night. The boy of age 23 and the girl, 25, was cousins. Dr. Khalil Naramgo, head of the district hospital said bodies of the two have been brought to the hospital. He claimed after the postmortem report it was learnt that the couple did not have sexual relations.      Full news...

Associated Press: The Army has approved new guidance to military commanders in an effort to stem the rising toll of soldier suicides, officials said late Thursday. Army leadership has become more alarmed as suicides from January through March rose to a reported 56 -- 22 confirmed and 34 still being investigated and pending confirmation. Usually, the vast majority of suspected suicides are eventually confirmed. The 2009 number compares to 140 for all of last year, a record blamed partly on strains caused by repeated deployments for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.      Full news...

National Post: Held down by men in police uniform, the half-naked victim screams in pain as another man wearing a white dishdasha brandishes a plank with a nail sticking out the end. “Get closer, get closer,” he instructs the camera operator as he sets to beating again. The man directing the action is said to be Sheik Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, a member of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. His victim is Mohammed Shah Poor, an Afghan grain dealer, suspected of shortchanging the Emirati royal in a delivery.      Full news...

Spero News: Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.      Full news...

PAN: Soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) shot dead three family members of a former Jihadi commander in southern Helmand province, officials said Saturday. Abdul Ahad Khan the former commander in Kabul confirmed the attack by foreign forces left three members of his family dead. ISAF helicopter opened fire on his family members at eight pm, he added, his three-months old granddaughter had survived the attack.      Full news...

Reuters: Survivors of a strong quake in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan say they spent a freezing night in the rain outside the collapsed remains of their homes because promised government help did not reach them. The local government said it had sent over 200 tents and around 600 blankets to the quake zone, and other assistance was on its way. But residents said they had seen no sign of the help, and spent a frightening night outside, with 7 or 8 aftershocks.      Full news...

Globe and Mail: What started eight years ago as a military operation to deprive terrorists of a safe haven from which to launch attacks on the West morphed, in the eyes of many, into something much grander: an exercise in nation building and bolstering human rights. The hopes for an improvement in the lives of Afghanistan's women have been sorely challenged recently by a series of events, from the horrific acid attacks on schoolgirls in Kandahar and the targeted assassinations of female politicians and police, to what is seen as the ultimate betrayal: the Afghan government's endorsement of the family law bill that appears to legalize rape in marriage.      Full news...

OpEdNews: Last month, the new Afghanistan parliament passed the "Shia Family Law" which legitimates marital rape and child marriage for Shia Muslims who make up ~15% of the population. At least 300 women protested the law, with their faces exposed. Nearly 1,000 Afghan men and their slaves turned maniacal and stoned the protesters. Police struggled to keep the two groups apart, reports the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).      Full news...