Brian Grogan, a spokesman for Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, told the UK Guardian that an average 10,000 civilians are dying each month in Darfur, totalling 180,000 over the past 18 months. These are only the victims of starvation or disease in refugee camps after being driven from their villages by government-backed militiamen. The estimate excludes those directly killed.

World media reported just yesterday that opposition lawmaker Ishenbai Kadyrbekov had been appointed interim president by Parliament following the ouster of Kyrgyzstan's long-ruling strongman Askar Akayev in a popular uprising. But on March 25, AP reports that a better-known opposition figure with a questionable past, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, has been named interim president—and prime minister. Reads the report:

With Afghan opium cultivation up 64% in 2004 over the previous year, far exceeding even the gravest predictions, the Pentagon is broadening the scope of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan to allow direct involvement in drug enforcement. Writes the NY Times March 25:

In a gunbattle in a village near the Pakistan border in Afghanistan's Paktika province, US troops apparently killed Raz Mohammed, described by a US commander as a "high-level Taliban."

After several days of parallel power, in which opposition protesters had seized control of provinicial cities but not the capital, the government of Kyrgyzstan fell March 24. Angry protests broke out in Bishkek, the capital, and crowds repeatedly attempted to storm the White House, the central government building. At first security forces repulsed the protesters, but eventually gave way, allowing them to take the building.

The Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan is divided by a popular uprising in the wake of contested elections, with the government of President Askar Akayev in control in the northern capital, Bishkek, but the southern city of Osh now in the hands of opposition protesters. Normality is starting to return to Osh following a wave of strikes and protests which culminated in the ouster of the official governor Kubanych Joldoshev and installation in power of an opposition leader, Anvar Artykov, who the central government refuses to recognize.

Traditional Friday jum'ah prayers led by a woman at a mixed-gender service, hailed as an historic first for Islam, were held March 18 at the Synod House of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a progressive Episcopal institution in New York City. An angry crowd of protesters across street were restrained by helmeted police armed with automatic rifles. Al-Jazeera TV was on hand with cameras as Muslim scholar Amina Wadud lead the service for some 150 worshippers following a short sermon in which she said: "Men and women are both equally essential in creation, and therefore reciprocally responsible for our relationship with Allah." New York's Newsday pictured a protester outside the event with a sign reading "MAY ALLAH'S CURSE BE UPON AMEENA WADUD." Major Islamic organizations in New York were either silent on the event, or openly opposed to it. The city's most established Muslim women's organization, Women in Islam, came only as observers and did not participate in the prayer. But participants interviewed by Newsday were enthusiastic. Said Nasheet Zaman, 22, a college student who came down from Ithaca, NY, for the event: "I just want to be a part of history, I guess. I fully support the fact that Dr. Wadud, as a woman, in leading the prayer." (Newsday, March 19)

The world is paying little note, but there is a popular uprising underway following contested elections in Kyrgyzstan, a key US ally in Central Asia. On March 20, protesters rallying against President Askar Akayev burned down police headquarters in the southern city of Jalal-Abad, in response to a pre-dawn action by special police units who briefly took back control of a regional administration office that had been occupied by opposition activists since early March.