World - The Christian Science Monitor

Bogotá, Colombia - Patricia Medina was nearly five months pregnant when her boyfriend, former US Marine Keith Stansell, left on a reconnaissance flight over a Colombian coca-growing region.

Prenden, Germany - At a forlorn bus stop 45 minutes outside Berlin, a faded schedule lists service to the suburbs. Voices drifting out of a workshop are the only signs of life in this 500-person town.

Amman, Jordan - Forbidden to work, Iraqi war refugees here are poor and getting poorer. Waiting lists for food and cash assistance have grown into the thousands.

Mexico City; and BogotÁ, Colombia - On a three-day visit to Colombia and Mexico, Republican presidential hopeful John McCain is seeking to show that he cares about the same issues as Latin Americans: security, immigration, and trade.

Srinagar, India - Jubilant Kashmiris lit bonfires and set off fireworks in the streets on Wednesday to celebrate a rare triumph in their struggle against Indian rule.

Bogotá, Colombia - Colombia's military on Wednesday rescued 15 top-level hostages including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three Americans in a risky bait-and-switch operation that involved infiltrating the top echelons of a Marxist rebel leadership.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - In its most strongly worded statement on Zimbabwe thus far, the African Union (AU) called on President Robert Mugabe to form a government of national unity – a power-sharing arrangement – with his chief rival, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Bangkok, Thailand - Seizing on rising fuel prices and coalition-party stresses, political opponents are pushing to unseat the leaders of two Southeast Asian democracies, only months into their elected terms, raising the prospect of prolonged instability and social tension.

Sukhumi, Abkhazia - Abkhazia's richest man, Beslan Butba, is an incurable optimist.

Beijing - A spiffy corporate campus in China isn't exactly where you'd expect to find a four-foot-tall wooden cross, let alone a church filled with Chinese singing hymns.

Paris - Some sticklers in the French press have a problem: How much attention is appropriate when the president's wife is about to release the country's first first lady album?

Eureka, S.D. - – The sight of volunteers from around the country planting soybeans amid the ruins of Damian and Martha Kappenman's farm brought tears to the eyes of the owners.

BEIJING - – Back in 1998, Lu Banglie remembered, he was just another farmer trying to get compensation for the pumpkins and cabbages ruined by floods that engulfed his little field in central China.

LONDON - Pump nozzle in hand, Lisa Atkins keeps a close eye on the digital display rapidly adding up the pounds. Gone are the days when she'd routinely fill the gas tank to the brim. She now has to be more cautious.

New Delhi - Pakistan's paramilitary forces launched a decisive offensive against Islamic militants encircling the strategically important city of Peshawar over the weekend – an indication that the new government is turning to military action after focusing, until now, on negotiation.

BAGHDAD - Iraq has invited 35 prequalified foreign companies to bid on contracts for the further development of six existing and operational oil fields and two gas fields. The Monday announcement, it says, is a bid to boost output levels by about 80 percent to 4.5 million barrels per day (b.p.d.) by 2013.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - – As the world grows more anxious to solve Zimbabwe's political crisis, all eyes focus on one man: South African President Thabo Mbeki.

FALLUJAH, Iraq - This is a city literally rising from the ashes. While reminders of two major US assaults here in April and November 2004 are inescapable, signs of rebirth are plenty. Men in jumpsuits busily work on construction sites, sewers are being installed, and a hospital is nearly completed.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA; and HARARE, ZIMBABWE - President Robert Mugabe has long been able to count on African leaders to sympathize with his goals of ridding Zimbabwe of the vestiges of white colonial rule.

Tel Aviv - In an epilogue to the Lebanon war two summers ago, Israel's cabinet on Sunday approved a prisoner swap with Hezbollah to recover two soldiers whose kidnapping along the Lebanese border sparked six weeks of cross-border fighting.

Katmandu, Nepal - Sunil Pant has built a successful gay rights movement – one that has fought against discrimination and violence in this conservative Southeast Asian country.

MOSCOW - Not since the days of the cold war has so much political significance been attached to the outcome of a sports event.

LONDON - Nelson Mandela uttered just four words criticizing Zimbabwe's leadership, but they were enough to resonate around the world.

JERUSALEM - Hamas, which for more than 20 years has been the Palestinian militant movement that most fervently rejected peace with Israel, today finds itself in the odd position of being the group trying to get its comrades in arms to hold their fire against the Jewish state.

Hadero, Ethiopia - – One by one, the children are placed on a scale hanging from a makeshift wooden stand.

Paris - The 36 French bluefin tuna boats in the Mediterranean steaming back to the southern port of Sète are filled with fishermen fuming about high fuel costs.

Pristina, Kosovo - He is a famous Serb political philosopher working in the trenches of Kosovo Albanian universities – not a place most Serbs dare to tread. He teaches human rights to Albanian students who grew up on war and who have no experience with Serbs, yet who seem to adore him as much as he does them.

Tripoli, Lebanon - Thick black smoke billows out of the shattered windows of a small house on the edge of the Jabal Mohsen district in this city as a fireman directs water into the burning building.