From Amnesty International, Aug. 23:

Iran: Authorities thwart campaign for gender equality
Women's rights activists in Iran face imprisonment. Activists campaigning for gender equality in Iran are unable to exercise their rights to freedom of expression and association, as shown by a number of recent arrests. Many of those arrested are supporters of the Campaign for Equality, a network which works to end legal discrimination against women.

From Fox News, Aug. 28:

Washington Post, Other Newspapers Won't Run 'Opus' Cartoon Mocking Radical Islam
A popular comic strip that poked fun at the Rev. Jerry Falwell without incident one week ago was deemed too controversial to run over the weekend because this time it took a humorous swipe at Muslim fundamentalists.

We recently posed the question of whether the relentless bloodshed in Iraq is fundamentally a national liberation struggle or a sectarian civil war. Which does it look like to you? From AP, Aug. 28:

31 killed at Iraqi religious festival
BAGHDAD — A power struggle between rival Shiite groups erupted during a religious festival in Karbala on Tuesday, and at least 31 people were killed by gunmen with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades who fought street battles amid crowds of pilgrims.

From the New York Times, Aug. 25:

Head-On Collision in Connecticut Kills 4 Teenagers and Injures 3 Adults
BRISTOL, Conn. — Four teenagers from nearby towns who had met on MySpace never made it home from an evening swim at another friend’s pool on Thursday night. They were killed when the driver of their speeding Subaru sports car lost control and veered into an oncoming car in the opposite lane, according to the police and interviews with young people who knew them.

Two days after launching aerial attacks on Shi'ite enclaves in Baghdad, the US is accused of air raids on police stations in the Kurdish autonomous zone. Jabar Yawer, spokesman for the Kurdish peshmerga militia, said a US helicopter attacked two Kurdish police outposts on Aug. 26, killing four police, wounding eight and destroying two vehicles. "We demand American troops to give an explanation for the US air strike against a police station," the Kurdish Interior Ministry said in a statement. The US military said it was investigating the report.

Opium production in Afghanistan has hit a record $3 billion this year, accounting for more than 90% of the world's illegal output, according to a new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Production is concentrated mainly in the strife-torn south of the country, where the Taliban—who banned poppy cultivation when they were in power—now profit from the trade, the report alleges. The reports says the area under opium cultivation rose to 193,000 hectares from 165,000 in 2006, while the harvest soared by more than a third to 8,200 tons from 6,100 tons. The amount of Afghan land used for growing opium was larger than the total under coca cultivation in Latin America, the report says.

The self-declared "autonomous municipality" of San Juan Copala and the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) announced they will hold a national meeting of autonomous municipalities, to take place at the indigenous mountain village September 15-16. APPO also said they will send representatives to the Zapatista Encuentro of the Peoples of America, a summit on indigenous rights to be held at the Yaqui village of Vicam in Sonora state Oct. 11-14. (La Jornada, Aug. 17)

The president of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH), Florentín Meléndez, interviewed the brothers Flavio and Horacio Sosa Villavicencio, leaders of the Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO), at the maximum security prison of Altilplano, in the state of Mexico, Aug. 8. From there, the CIDH chief traveled to Oaxaca on a fact-finding mission. (La Jornada, Aug. 9) The following day, in Oaxaca City, he issued a statement calling on Gov. Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and Mexican President Felipe Calderón to address the human rights crisis in the state, in compliance with international norms and Mexico's own stated policies. (El Universal, Aug. 10)