PAN (Translated by RAWA): In the common border of Torkham between Pakistan and Afghanistan about 4000 children engage in harsh work everyday. Besides being beaten by the border patrols of Pakistan they are also imprisoned. Rana, a 12-year old girl belonging to the Sarkhrud District of Ningarhar province, told PAN on 20 November that her father has Hepatitis and she is forced to work in Torkham. She added that everyday she has to bring a small bag of flour from the other side of the border to earn 10 rupees.      Full news...

King’s Journalism Review: A journalism student was sentenced to 20 years in an Afghani prison. He is charged with downloading and distributing an article he found online that criticized the rights of women in Islam. Yaqub Ibrahimi vividly remembers the day his brother, Sayed Parwez Kambakhsh was arrested. It was around ten in the morning on October 27, 2007. Four guards from Afghanistan’s national security service came to their small apartment, arrested Parwez and left. The security officers took Parwez to the Mazar-i-Sharif Prison and after a four-minute trial, sentenced him to death on January 22, 2008.      Full news...

AFP: Waheeda's arms were blown off in a suicide attack in the Afghan capital a few years ago. Flesh was also torn from one of her legs and she lost much of her vision. Her mashed face is split by an uneven scar. Now about 35, she has six children but not much else. "I cannot even drink water by myself," she weeps silently, dabbing at a tear with one of her stumped arms.      Full news...

PAN: Unknown armed men kidnapped three students of two high schools students in Baraki Barak district of Logar province, on Wednesday. Deputy Director of Logar province, Mohammad Yasin Ahmadi told Pajhwok Afghan News that the students of two different high schools in the district were residents of Chalozai village.      Full news...

AP: Khan and his children are among nearly 4,000 Afghan families living in a makeshift settlement because their homes were destroyed or overtaken in the decades they spent abroad waiting out wars. First, with the former Soviet Union in the 80s, then the strife of civil war and most recently the U.S. offensive against the Taliban. At the height of their exodus, Afghans made up the world's largest refugee population with 8 million people in more than 70 countries. More than 5 million of these people have returned home since 2002, according to the U.N.      Full news...

PAN: Convoy of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) run over a ten-years-old girl in northern Afghanistan. The minor girl received injuries in the mishap but succumbed to her injuries later in the hospital, he worried. The dead body of the girl was handed over to her family, he added.      Full news...

Spiegel Online: It's all too often that the US military accepts civilian casualties as a necessary evil. An internal Air Force report describes its excessively violent methods as well as how officials have been trying to placate surviving family members with money. There have been times when artillary shells have killed innocent civilians after landing several kilometers off-target. That is what happened in Paktika Province in the country's southeast on July 19. In other instances, such as that of last Monday -- as well as on July 6 and other previous occasions -- wedding parties have been misidentified as groups of insurgents -- with deadly consequences.      Full news...

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Afghan education authorities say they are facing a difficult task of convincing parents to send their daughters to school as attacks on female students have increased in recent months. Three girls sustained severe burns in the southern town of Kandahar earlier in the week when unknown men sprayed acid on up to 15 girls. One of the girls might permanently lose her sight.      Full news...

CNN: Little Banafsha wakes up in her small mud home, has a cup of tea and braces herself for the day ahead. She is just 11 years old, but she is the breadwinner for her family. Literally. Without the bread that she begs from strangers, she, her sisters, her baby brothers and her mom would all go hungry.      Full news...

IRIN: UXOs and explosive remnants of war have also been reported in other returnees' settlements in the eastern provinces of Nangarhar and Kunar. Hundreds of thousands have returned there in the past few years. "About 200 metres from our settlement the area is full of landmines and explosive devices which often kill animals," said Mohammad Afzal, a resident of a settlement in Nangahar Province. Provincial officials said mine-clearing agencies had been asked to re-examine areas in Baghlan and Nangarhar provinces for any hazardous explosives.      Full news...

BBC News: Attackers in Afghanistan have sprayed acid in the faces of at least 15 girls near a school in Kandahar, police say. They say the attack happened shortly before at least six people were killed in a bomb blast near a government building in the city.      Full news...

Quqnoos: Jobless refugees turfed out of Iran turn to lives of crime, officials say. Rising unemployment has forced many people living in the south-western province of Nimroz to turn to crime, militancy or drugs for money, officials say. About 30,000 illegal Afghan immigrants have been ordered out of Iran since the start of October for not having work permits. The returnees say they are willing to work in Nirmoz for $2 a day, but they complain that there are no jobs available for them.      Full news...

Los Angeles Times: The U.S. military acknowledged Saturday that 37 civilians were killed and 35 injured during fighting last week in Kandahar province between insurgents and coalition forces. The finding came just three days after provincial officials and the Afghan president's office asserted that three dozen people had died in an errant U.S. airstrike on a wedding party in a village outside the city of Kandahar.      Full news...

PAN: Over 14 security guards of a road construction company were killed in firing by American soldiers in the southeastern Khost province late Sunday evening, the provincial governor said. Arsala Jamal told PAN the firefight erupted in Khoni Khwar area of the province earlier Sunday evening. The clash occurred after American soldiers landed the helicopter on their way to Bak district.      Full news...

VOA: Pakistani security officials say suspected Taliban militants have killed two Afghan men, accusing them of spying for U.S. forces. Officials said the militants left the bodies on a road in the North Waziristan tribal area of Pakistan's volatile northwest.      Full news...

CNN News: The U.S. military is investigating two airstrikes this week that Afghan officials say killed as many as 60 civilians. Many Afghans accuse the United States of not taking caution when carrying out airstrikes in civilian areas and Karzai has been under enormous political pressure to stop the strikes.      Full news...

Workers World: For months now Afghanistan has been deadlier for U.S. troops than Iraq, even though there are 32,000 U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq. A total of 1,004 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001. Some 625 of the casualties were from the United States. Forty percent of them occurred in the past two years. (icasualties.org)      Full news...

RTTNews: Civilian casualties were reported in an airstrike by U.S.-led coalition warplane in retaliation to Taliban militant attack in western Afghanistan Wednesday. This is the second consecutive day of civilian deaths in coalition force airstrikes in Afghanistan. Provincial council chief of Badghis province said around 30 civilians were killed in Wednesday's air raid, the American military did not confirm the death toll.      Full news...

ATN (Translated by RAWA): A 7-year old girl was raped by a young man in Ghazni province of Afghanistan. The girl is currently under treatment in the provincial hospital of Ghazni. Doctors in the hospital say that her condition is better now.      Full news...

Xinhua: As many as 37 civilians have been killed in an airstrike of U.S.-led troops in southern Afghanistan while attending a wedding party, local Afghan villagers said Wednesday. Haji Roozi Khan, owner of the mentioned house, told Xinhua on the spot that the air bombing and firing meant to retaliate on militants who hit the wedding gathering, killing 10 women, 23 children, and four men, all civilians.      Full news...

Times Online: Nearly 4,000 new mental health cases were reported in the Armed Forces last year, according to Ministry of Defence figures. Women in the Forces also suffered from a higher rate of mental disorder than their male counterparts. Seven hundred servicewomen, some of whom will have served in Iraq or Afghanistan, were assessed last year as having a form of mental health illness. Of the 868 patients treated between October and December, the number of women with mental disorders was the equivalent of 8 per 1,000 compared with 4 per 1,000 men.      Full news...

Daily Times: The Taliban — blamed nowadays for just about all of Afghanistan’s ills — have officially been gone for nearly seven years, so why are conditions still so abysmal? While billions of dollars in aid have led to improvements in urban areas, where health facilities have been built and midwives trained, the overall maternal death figures have hardly changed. As one doctor told me: “A competent midwife or nurse would rather be out of work in Kabul than stuck in a remote village.” But most Afghans live in remote villages — those in Badakhshan can be reached only after a day’s bumpy ride on a donkey.      Full news...

Canada Free Press: If you want to know what life was like in the seventh century, Afghanistan is the place to go. It is largely devoid of anything passing for modernity, by which we mean medical facilities, schools, roads, and such. Never mind the telephones and other detritus of modern life, the conversations have not changed in centuries. The only reliable element of Afghanistan’s economy is poppy cultivation for the opium trade which the CIA estimates generates “roughly $4 billion in illicit economic activity.” This is another way of saying that none of this money reaches what passes for a central government except in the form of bribes. It is a major source of funding for the Taliban.      Full news...

PAN: A woman in the district of Ali Shing, eastern Laghman province, committed self immolation and died on Friday night due to domestic violence. The woman, married in an exchange marriage, was mistreated by her in-laws, Muhammad Qader, resident of Shagi area, told Pajhwok Afghan News.      Full news...

PAN: More than 80% Afghans are faced by mental health problems due to long war and economic depravity, where as child stress has increased by 30%, compared to the past, said Dr. Khalid Mufti, a well known Psychiatrist here on Friday.      Full news...

AsiaNews: A team of experts from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a leading British defence think-tank, said that famine is a greater threat to Afghanistan than the Taliban. At least 8.4 million Afghans are facing food shortages as a result of poor harvest, drought and inadequate irrigation. World Food Programme calls for at least 95,000 tonnes in food aid by February.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The beggars of Hazrat Ali (ra)’s shrine in Balkh who earn a little money with a lot of difficulties, have to pay 30 to 40 Afghanis daily to the police of the shrine. The police officers who are not satisfied from the monthly wages they get from the government, say that 5000 Afghanis in a month is too less to fulfill their needs and so they are forced to take bribe from beggars. On average, everyday almost 250 beggars enter the Mazar-e-Sharif Shrine and each earns a little more or less than a 100 Afghanis everyday. The police officers take 30 Afghanis on average from each beggar and this makes 220,000 Afghanis ($4500) per month.      Full news...

Reuters: Nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered sexual trauma, from harassment to rape, researchers reported on Tuesday. Kimerling said in a telephone interview the term "military sexual trauma" covers a range of events from coerced sex to outright rape or threatening and unwelcome sexual advances. "If you think about military service where you are living and working so closely with the same people, that even if it is not sexual assault ... it is possible that severe sexual harassment is just as traumatic," she said. The study does not cover active-duty servicemen and women, as VA services are only available to discharged veterans.      Full news...

RAWA News: To condemn the presence of Afghan criminals in the Mini-Peace Jirga in Islamabad, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) held a sit-in protest on October 28, 2008. RAWA denounced the participation of corrupt people and criminals like Abdullah (head of the delegation), Kabir Ranjbar, Arif Noorzai and Farooq Wardak. RAWA emphasized that such murderers and traitors can’t solve the problem of terrorism in both the countries and in no way can represent the Afghan people. The hands of above-mentioned people are stained with the blood of our innocent people.      Full news...

AFP: Afghans are increasingly pessimistic about their country, with security, unemployment and high prices dominating concerns, according to an annual mood survey released Tuesday. Thirty-eight percent of respondents this year said Afghanistan was moving in the right direction, compared with 42 percent in 2007 and 44 percent in 2006.      Full news...