International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced May 22 that a war crimes investigation will be opened into hundreds of rapes and other violations in the Central African Republic. The investigation concerns the conflict between the former regime of President Ange-Felix Patasse and rebel forces after a failed coup by current president Francois Bozize in October 2002, but the Court is also monitoring the ongoing war in the country's north.

Talk about non-news. The Democratic majority, after all their hot air, agrees to drop a timetable for troop withdrawal from the war funding bill. The only real news here is how thoroughly the Republicans have set the terms for the debate. Writes the New York Times, May 24: "Democrats said they did not relish the prospect of leaving Washington for a Memorial Day break — the second recess since the financing fight began — and leaving themselves vulnerable to White House attacks that they were again on vacation while the troops were wanting."

Farmers in southern Iraq are turning to opium cultivation for the first time, the Belfast Telegraph reports. Traditional rice farmers along the Euphrates, outside the southern city of Diwaniya, have now abandoned rice—for which the area is famous—in favor of poppies. The well-irrigated lands around the towns of Ash Shamiyah, al Ghammas and Ash Shinafiyah are controlled by Shi'ite militias and the government has little control there.

The separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) denied responsibility for the May 22 bomb attack that killed six and wounded up to 100 in the busy Ankara shopping district of Ulus. "We have no connection with the attack," the PKK said in a statement posted on the Firat news agency website, which has ties to the guerrillas. Turkish authorities initially said a suicide bomber carried out the attack, but that the use of A-4 plastic explosives points to the PKK. The PKK has used the explosive in the past, but typically does not carry out suicide bombings. (Hurriyet, Reuters, May 24)

Pakistani UN peacekeeping troops have traded in gold and sold weapons to Congolese militia groups they were supposed to be disarming, according to a BBC report. These militia groups were guilty of some of the worst rights in during the Democratic Republic of Congo's long civil war. The trading went on in 2005 around the mining town of Mongbwalu, in northeastern Congo—the scene of brutal fighting between the Lendu and Hema ethnic groups. A UN investigative team sent to gather evidence was obstructed and threatened, the report charges. The team's report was finally suppressed by the UN itself to "avoid political fallout."

The two main guerilla organizations in eastern Ethiopia's Ogaden region—the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF)—say their forces have killed more than 150 government troops in joint operations this month. Ethiopian officials deny the claim. The OLF seeks autonomy for region's majority Oromo peoples, while the ONLF wants an independent state for ethnic Somalis in the region. Last month, the ONLF attacked a Chinese-run oil installation, killing 65 Ethiopian and nine Chinese workers. (BBC, May 21)

Hundreds of Somalis who have fled violence in Mogadishu for the separatist enclave of Somaliland are unable to obtain aid from the UN as refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs), because the UN does not recognize the breakaway republic as independent, while the government of Somaliland is unwilling to compromise claims of independence by recognizing Somalis as IDPs. (AlJazeera, May 21)

Egyptian authorities detained 39 members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Eleven were arrested May 20 in the southern province of Beni Sueif on charges of holding "a secret meeting." Fourteen more were detained in dawn raids May 21 in the province of Sharqiyah, including Abdel Aziz Abdel Qader, who heads the group's Sharqiyah office. The move comes as Egypt closes the door for candidate nominations for next month's upper house parliamentary elections. (AlJazeera, May 21) The Brotherhood is officially banned, but its leaders are sometimes allowed to run for office as independents.