Hoping to help resolve the constitutional crisis unfolding on the tiny Islamic island nation, the U.S. government dispatched Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, to the Maldives. The country of little more than 300,000 people has endured violent street protests, prompting travel advisories from the American and British governments since trouble erupted between the president and parliament. Blake had served as ambassador to Sri Lanka and the Maldives from 2006 to 2009.

U.S. government contractors may be engaging in sex trafficking in Iraq and Afghanistan, but officials in Washington appear to be taking no action despite a law created to discourage the illicit behavior.

It took 10 years, as well as officers from the U.S. Marshals, FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration

Shan Zhu Qiu, an immigrant from China who fled his native country out of fear of persecution over his Falun Gong practice, has been given a second opportunity to stay in the United States. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals on July 12 ordered immigration officials to reconsider Qiu’s asylum case after his attorney successfully argued that his client would be punished back home for being a member of Falun Gong.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan has become the first sitting head of state ever to be charged by the International Criminal Court with committing crimes of genocide. The charges stem from a long campaign targeting three of Sudan’s ethnic groups (Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa), during which as many as 300,000 people have died in the Darfur region since 2003. A formal arrest warrant was issued for Bashir in order to try him for crimes of targeted mass killing, rape, torture and forcible transfer. Bashir and his government claim that only 10,000 have been killed.

The Catholic Church’s headquarters in Rome announced over the weekend that it lost money for the third year in a row. Expenses outpaced revenues for the Vatican in 2009 by $5.2 million ($314.7 million in revenue against $319.9 million in expenses), despite the fact that donations worldwide were up. Catholics last year gave $82.5 million, compared to $75.8 million in 2008 and $79.8 million in 2007. Leading donors were from the U.S., Italy and Germany.

Hollman Morris has earned a reputation as a hard-hitting investigative journalist in Colombia, exposing abuses by government officials and paramilitary groups. This body of work may be what’s keeping Morris from visiting the United States, according to human rights organizations who have accused the Obama administration of kowtowing to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe and his government, who hate the reporter because of his exposés.

Corruption continues to rob struggling Afghans of their currency. The citizens of Afghanistan forked over $1 billion in bribes in 2009—more than double of what was paid in 2007 ($466 million).

Despite its own reports documenting abusive behavior by Cambodian military units, the U.S. State Department agreed with the Department of Defense to allow Cambodia to host a military exercise for international peacekeepers.