AFP: "I stand before you today with the strength and clarity and resolve to declare to the military, my government and the world that this soldier will not be deploying to Iraq," Chiroux said in the sun-filled rotunda of a congressional building in Washington. "My decision is based on my desire to no longer continue violating my core values to support an illegal and unconstitutional occupation... I refuse to participate in the Iraq occupation," he said, as a dozen veterans of the five-year-old Iraq war looked on.      Full news...

The Independent: The city is awash with widows who have come with the same idea. It is one of Kabul's many problems, this influx of desperate humanity that has flooded the city with double, treble the people it ever housed before the Russian invasion in 1979. Three-quarters of Afghans are almost completely illiterate. Among widows, the proportion is much higher. Kabul is awash with street children, hundreds of thousands of them, scavenging through rubbish, selling plastic bags, repairing bicycles, labouring for shoe-makers, or asking for alms in return for sending unwelcome wafts of aromatic smoke from the tin cans they wave at likely-looking passers-by.      Full news...

Xinhua: The United Nations Special Rapporteuron extra judicial executions Philip Alston on Thursday expressed concern over civilians' killing in Afghanistan and urged all warring sides in the country to respect human rights. "In the past four months, hundreds of civilians have been killed. They have died from bombs, missiles, explosive devices, police fire, beheadings and domestic violence," Alston said in a statement handed out at a news briefing here.      Full news...

Times Online: It is an unremarkable scene by Afghan standards – at first sight, just another sad monument to three decades of war. Yet this desolate, seemingly hopeless, place is the source of Afghanistan’s most recent chapter of violence – and possibly now of a brighter economic future.      Full news...

PAN: Attorney general Abdul Jabar Sabit said on Wednesday 22 members of the parliament accused of various crimes have been avoiding facing the law. The attorney general said the MPs, whom he did not name, were summoned officially many times to attend his office for explanations of the accusations and for investigations.      Full news...

Aatash.org: Five unknown persons including a woman had entered her vehicle, beaten her up and warned her to death if she continues to appear on TV. She was attacked in Darb-e Malik locality of Herat city while she was on her way to office. The attackers were in black clothes.      Full news...

International Herald Tribune: Thieves raided the city flour market in broad daylight a few weeks ago, shooting and wounding two people before escaping with their loot. "We are not feeling safe," Haji Hayatullah, one of the flour merchants, said sitting on the floor of his shop with sacks of flour stacked around him. "We don't have security and we don't trust the government to provide it." The merchants got together and hired eight private security guards.      Full news...

IRIN News: The killing and abduction of dozens of health workers in the past two years has prompted officials to shut down at least 36 health facilities in Afghanistan’s volatile southern and eastern provinces, depriving hundreds of thousands of people of basic health services, according to the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH).      Full news...

Daily Times: Pakistani society was ‘militarised’ with ‘active support’ from the United States as part of the ‘critical evolution’ of the ‘big powers’’ policy for the region, the Awami National Party (ANP)’s Afrasiab Khattak said on Wednesday.      Full news...

Mail Online: A teacher was shot to death in northern Afghanistan after he gave a speech condemning suicide bombings, it was revealed today. e spoke at a gathering of about 700 people, including the Kunduz governor, and was on his way home when he was killed, Khair Mohammad Subat said.      Full news...

Pajhwok Afghan News (Translated by RAWA): A family handed over two of its children to another family because they were unable to feed them. The father named Bashir Ahmad lives in Ashaba village in Jabl Saraj District of Parwan province. He said, “I announced my poverty in the Jamay Qal-e-Naw Mosque in Bagram District and some time later a man called Abdul Raziq came and agreed to take away my children and look after them.”      Full news...

ATN: An eight-year old girl was murdered in Takhar province by her rapists, after she was raped. Security officials of Takhar said that five people have been arrested for being involved in the murder and they have confessed their crime.      Full news...

The Earth Times: At least two people were killed and six others wounded when police opened fire on protesters blocking a highway linking eastern Afghanistan to Pakistan, witnesses said Saturday. Hundreds of protesters blocked the highway in Shinwar district of eastern Nangarhar province protesting against the alleged killing of civilians by US-led coalition forces on Friday night.      Full news...

PAN: A demonstration staged by hundreds of school students demanding pay raise for their teachers turned violent as they hurled stones at police and torched 45 vehicles here on Saturday.      Full news...

Toronto Star: Not a single authority in the nation, right up into the president's office, has the clout to oppose a powerful alignment of forces that are a law unto themselves: Warlords, ministers, parliamentarians, the military, police, tribal elders and wealthy entrepreneurs who are making a killing in the free-for-all of multi-billion-dollar international aid, a tsunami of cash that has made tycoons out of two-bit larcenists and filchers.      Full news...

AFP: Shamsuddin, who goes by one name, is among millions struggling to survive in war-ravaged Afghanistan, one of the world's poorest countries where unemployment is 40 percent and half the population is under the poverty line. It is the poorest who are worst hurt by a global rise food prices which have nearly doubled in three years, according to the World Bank.      Full news...

RFE/RL: Death during childbirth is a scourge in Afghanistan. On average, a woman dies there every 27 minutes from complications during pregnancy, according to the nongovernmental group Save The Children. It is a chilling statistic that contributes to making Afghanistan one of the most difficult places in the world to be a mother.      Full news...

PAN: Six civilians collecting poppy harvest in the southern Helmand province were killed and three were wounded as they were caught in a clash between Taliban and NATO and Afghan troops, officials and locals said on Thursday.      Full news...

PAN: More than 5,755 families have so far returned to Afghanistan after their 2,808 houses at Jalozai camp, the biggest Afghan refugee camp, were bulldozed, sources said on Monday.      Full news...

Reuters: Scarred by decades of turmoil and grief, 66 per cent of Afghans suffer from depression or some form of mental disorder, and an increasing number are turning to illegal drugs, a top health official said.      Full news...

Bloomberg.com: The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said. Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland.      Full news...

AP: The United Nations on Saturday was investigating reports that a controlled explosion of old ordnance has caused more damage to one of the famed Bamiyan Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Taliban seven year ago.      Full news...

The Globe and Mail: Indeed, many of the corruption problems date back to the early months of the Afghan war, in 2001, when U.S. Army Special Forces and CIA agents gave millions of dollars to regional fighters such as Mr. Sherzai to battle the Taliban, and then, after the Taliban had been ousted, allowed them to become the de facto government.      Full news...

PAN: Hundreds of teachers of 15 schools in Zaranj city capital of western Nimroz province went on protest on Saturday over the low salary and non-payment since last three months. Thousands of students were waiting in classes; however the teachers did not attend the classes.      Full news...

Tolo TV: The Pakistani police at the Torkham border killed a 7-year-old Afghan girl for carrying 3 kg of flour by crushing her under a car.      Full news...

Tolo TV: In Kabul a family was forced to sell two of their children to buy themselves food. This poor family which lived in a shabby house on a hill was forced to sell its children because of hunger and poverty. This family has six small children and their father is the only bread winner in the family.      Full news...

The News and Observer: Trafficked across the border from Pakistan with her 3-year-old son, Rukhma was handed to an Afghan who raped and abused her, then beat the toddler to death as she watched helplessly. He was jailed for 20 years for murder, but Rukhma ended up in prison, too.      Full news...

PAN: The freedom of press, which initially improved in the first few years of the post-Taliban era, is now getting worse the head of the Committee to Protect Journalists have said. It improved, and now it is getting worse," CPJ Executive Director, Joel Simon, told Pajhwok Afghan News in an interview after releasing its first every Impunity Index.      Full news...