Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is to face trial for breaching the conditions of her detention under house arrest, her lawyer has said.

Ms Suu Kyi will stand trial on 18 May, the lawyer, Hla Myo Myint, said.

She was taken to a prison from her home in Rangoon, where she has spent most of the past 19 years, to hear the charges.

A US man whose uninvited visit to her home led to the charges, will also be tried on immigration and security offences, the lawyer added.

To Accommodate New Troops, the U.S. Military Expanded a Base and Inadvertently Disrupted Ancient Afghan Canals

Deep beneath the desolate landscape here are miles of canals that have watered wheat fields and vineyards for untold generations. They're also at the center of a dispute that handed the Taliban a propaganda victory and angered the very people the U.S. military hopes to win over through its troop surge.

Rushing to expand a base to fit the new forces, American commanders seized farmland and built on top of these ancient underground-irrigation systems. The blunder is an indication of how fragile the effort to win public backing for the U.S.-led war can be. In some cases, the tension is over civilian casualties; in others, it's about the corruption of U.S. allies in the Afghan government. Here, it's an accidental clash of infrastructure technologies separated by a few yards of dirt and 3,000 years.

Executives of Colgan Air struggled to defend the Manassas-based airline yesterday as details emerged about the low pay of its pilots, their long commutes and the need of some to hold second jobs. This Story

• Panel on Fatal Crash Looks at Pilots' Pay, Commutes
• NTSB Investigation Report (PDF)

Colgan faced questions from the National Transportation Safety Board about its pilots on the second day of public hearings into the crash of Continental Connection Flight 3407, which killed all 49 people on board and one on the ground near Buffalo on Feb. 12. It was the deadliest U.S. transportation accident in seven years.

Under questioning from the board, Mary Colgan Finnigan, Colgan's vice president for administration, confirmed that Rebecca Shaw, co-pilot of the fatal flight, drew an annual salary of about $16,200. The board also said that Shaw once held a second job in a coffee shop while working as a pilot for the airline in Norfolk.

Documents have emerged which detail for the first time the potentially lethal nature of toxic waste dumped by British-based oil traders in one of west Africa's poorest countries.

More than 30,000 people from Ivory Coast claim they were affected by the ­poisonous cocktail and are currently bringing Britain's biggest-ever group lawsuit against the company, Trafigura.

The firm chartered the ship, Probo Koala, which transported the cargo to Ivory Coast in 2006.

An official Dutch analysis of samples of the waste carried by the Probo Koala indicate that it contained approximately 2 tonnes of hydrogen sulphide, a killer gas with a characteristic smell of rotten eggs.

(Stockholm, 12 May 2009) Air cargo companies involved in illicit or destabilizing arms transfers to African conflict zones have also been repeatedly contracted to deliver humanitarian aid and support peacekeeping operations, according to a report released today.
Read the full press release in English here. Full press release in Swedish here. The full report 'Air Transport and Destabilizing Commodity Flows' can be downloaded here. Download the Executive Summary here. To book expert interviews, phone Daniel at +46 8 655 9738 or Stephanie at +46 8 655 9747.