18 May 2013 Last updated at 09:05 GMT
Afghan parliament halts debate on women's rights law
A debate by Afghan MPs about beefing up a law to prevent violence against women has been halted amid angry scenes.
Parliament's speaker ended the debate after 15 minutes after traditionalists called for the law to be scrapped.
A law banning violence against women, child marriages and forced marriages was passed by presidential decree in 2009, but did not gain MPs' approval.
Hundreds of people have been jailed under the current law, introduced by President Hamid Karzai.
'Lack of assurance'
The decision to seek parliamentary approval for the law had split women activists.
‘Cage-like devices enclose limbs, holding bones together'
Conflict injuries fail to curb the human spirit in Turkish border city of Reyhanli
Caelainn Hogan
His bare feet strapped with white bandages to the pedals of a rehabilitation machine, 12-year-old Ali (not real name) tests the returning muscles in his legs, frail after the 20 days of near-paralysis he suffered after he was caught in the crossfire of a gun battle while playing in the street in his home city of Aleppo.
For over a month he and his father have called the rehabilitation centre of the Orient Hospital home, a clinic run by Syrian doctors on the outskirts of the Turkish border city of Reyhanli.
RUSSIA
Human rights activist Pamfilova: 'Demand for change in Russia is increasing'
The Kremlin's strong political line will not last forever, says Ella Pamfilova, a renowned human rights activist and former adviser to the Russian president. She told DW that the first signs of change are visible.
DW: You criticize the lack of trust in Russia's civil society. What do you think is behind that?
Ella Pamfilova: If you compare the NGOs' awareness levels to the degree of trust they enjoy, you will get totally different results. NGOs are becoming more and more visible. Just a couple of years ago, less than 20 percent of Russian citizens knew that NGOs existed. Now, more than half of the population is aware of that - about 56 percent.
But trust in NGOs is still quite low. It slowly increases by 1 percent per year. This can be explained by the fact that Russian citizens are generally very distrustful. Of all societal organizations, it's the well-known institutions that are trusted the most: the president, the church and the military forces. The political parties are hardly ever seen as trustworthy. In a sense, Russians only trust their relatives and friends.
Living by the Numbers: Big Data Knows What Your Future Holds
By Martin U. Müller, Marcel Rosenbach and Thomas Schulz
Forget Big Brother. Companies and countries are discovering that algorithms programmed to scour vast quantities of data can be much more powerful. They can predict your next purchase, forecast car thefts and maybe even help cure cancer. But there is a down side.
On balmy spring evenings, Hamburg's Köhlbrand Bridge offers an idyllic postcard view of the city's harbor. The Elbe River shimmers in the reddish glow of sunset, forklifts, cranes and trucks seem to move in slow motion, and occasionally a container ship glides by. But from the standpoint of Sebastian Saxe, the area is primarily an equation with many variables. For the past four-and-a-half years, the 57-year-old mathematician has been working on his trickiest computing task yet at the behest of the company that manages the Hamburg port.
Meteor strike with moon causes massive explosion
May 18, 2013 - 2:58PM
Stephen Cauchi
The most powerful meteor strike on the moon ever observed has just been announced by NASA.
A March 17 strike on the moon caused an explosion equal to five tons of TNT and could have seen with the naked eye, said Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office.
"It exploded in a flash many times as bright as anything we've seen before," said Dr Cooke.
"Anyone looking at the moon at the moment of impact could have seen the explosion, no telescope required. For about one second the impact site was glowing like a fourth-magnitude star."
Clashes at Cairo protest calling for Morsi to resign
Demonstrators calling for Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi to resign and demanding early elections clashed with riot police in Cairo.
The demonstrators, most of them teenagers, threw molotov cocktails at the police who replied with volleys of tear gas cannisters, but there were no reports of casualties.
The clashes took place near Cairo's Tahrir Square, the symbolic heart of the opposition movement that brought down President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011.
Earlier Friday, marches had begun in various parts of the capital with the aim of converging on Tahrir Square.
At the head of one march people were carrying two large banners, one reading "an early presidential election" and the other "a unifying constitution for Egypt".
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