Among the tens of thousands who have fled their homes in Swat Valley and the adjacent Buner district of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province (NWFP) are about 2,000 Sikhs who have taken refuge in a Sikh shrine in Hasanabdal, a town about 50 kilometers from Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. According to Gulbeer Singh, head priest at the Sri Punja Sahib shrine, about 207 families from Buner District and 96 from Swat had taken refuge there. The number of Sikh internally displaced persons (IDPs), he said, is roughly 2,000.

US Nuremberg trials prosecutor Henry King Jr. died May 9 from cancer at the age of 89. King, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, was one of the last three surviving Nuremberg prosecutors, and at 29 was the youngest US prosecutor at Nuremberg at the time of the trials. King was later instrumental in the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the new international tribunal that now prosecutes suspected war criminals.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said May 12 that President Dmitry Medvedev and Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso will discuss a possible peace treaty between the two nations at a G8 summit in Italy in July. Putin spoke at a news conference following talks with Japanese officials during his visit to Japan.

US journalist Roxana Saberi was released from prison May 11 after an Iranian appeals court reduced her eight-year term for espionage to two years and then suspended the sentence. According to statements from Saberi's lawyer, the court determined that the espionage charge was not valid since the US is not an enemy government, but could not ignore that the nature of Saberi's actions had posed a threat to Iranian national security. Saberi had appealed her conviction for espionage in late April, and she had been on a hunger strike in protest of her imprisonment. (Jurist, May 11)

The US announced May 11 the replacement of its commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, with Lt.-Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a former chief of Pentagon special operations forces. "Our mission there requires new thinking and new approaches from our military leaders," said Defense Secretary Robert Gates. (AlJazeera, May 11)

An official for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs May 7 confirmed the government's intention to appeal a Federal Court ruling directing Ottawa to firmly push for the repatriation of Canadian Guantánamo Bay detainee Omar Khadr. In a brief statement obtained by the Toronto Star, the official emphasized Prime Minister Stephen Harper's belief that the severity of the crimes allegedly committed by Khadr call for a judicial rather than a political process.

Basra's oil pipeline workers, who had been staging occupations of the facilities since April 27 to demand back pay, scored a victory this week as the Baghdad administration agreed to meet with their leaders and negotiate a payment schedule. The administration capitulated after the workers threatened to shut down the pipeline and call a general strike. Union leader Faisal Hamdan told management the workers were prepared to immediately shut down all exports fro Basra's harbor.

A jury in US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky on May 7 convicted former Pfc. Steven D. Green of the rape and murder of an Iraqi girl, and the murder of her family in Mahmudiya. Prosecutors had previously elected to seek the death penalty against Green, one of six soldiers who was initially charged with the various crimes resulting from the rape and murders.