With Pakistani elections looming on May 11, it seems like every day brings a new report about destabilizing attacks in the country. The unrelenting violence, which Pakistan's Express Tribune has dubbed the "Reign of Terror," includes assassinations that have delayed elections in several districts and left a staggering number of casualties. Bloomberg has compiled the most thorough timeline of the attacks and estimates that, in the past month, "at least 118 people have been killed and 494 injured."

Terrorists -- mostly from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), but also Baluchi separatists -- have pursued politicians in particular, and candidates have been gunned down in the streets. On May 3, Saddiq Zaman Khattak, a parliamentary candidate for the secular Awami National Party (ANP), was shot and killed along with his three-year-old son while returning from Friday prayers in Karachi. Gunmen ambushed ANP candidate Muhammad Islam on April 27, killing his brother in the attack. And Fakhrul Islam, a provincial assembly candidate for the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) party in Hyderabad, was assassinated by the TTP on April 11.

Bombings, some of which have targeted candidates, have also indiscriminately killed their supporters. The deadliest blast killed at least 20 individuals at an ANP rally on April 16. The attacks have targeted election events, but also included car bombings and bomb and grenade attacks on campaign offices and potential polling places. Just today, gunmen abducted Ali Haider Gilani, a provincial assembly candidate for the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) and son of former Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, after killing his bodyguards. It is the first time a candidate has been kidnapped in the rash of attacks.

"It is pretty clear that this is the most violent election I have witnessed in 23 years" of election monitoring in Pakistan, Peter Manikas of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs told the Washington Post. "It's a different type of violence in trying to disrupt the election as a whole. It makes everything unsafe."

Early in April, the TTP singled out three political parties -- ANP, MQM, and PPP -- as the targets of their attacks, but in the past week, not even the fundamentalist Jamiat-e-Ulema (JeU) party has been spared. On May 6, a JeU rally was bombed in Kurram, killing 25, though a TTP spokesman was quick to assert that the Taliban didn't oppose the party so much as the candidate, "who they said had betrayed Arab fighters to U.S. agents," according to Reuters. The next day, a suicide bombing in Hangu targeting another JeU rally killed 10. In a new statement quoted by Reuters, TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud expressed opposition to the political process as a whole, writing, "We don't accept the system of infidels which is called democracy."

The worst violence may in fact be yet to come, as Pakistanis head to the polls this weekend. TTP pamphlets posted in Karachi are warning potential voters to stay home, the Telegraph reports. "If you stay away you will protect yourself," one reads. "If not you are responsible for your fate.... If you go there you will be responsible for the loss of your life and your loved ones." In anticipation of attacks, more than 600,000 security personnel will be on duty for the elections, with five to ten guards at each polling place, according to the Associated Press.

It's a far cry from the atmosphere you'd hope for to mark the first time in Pakistani history that a democratically elected civilian government has finished its term.

Held captive in a dilapidated house in Cleveland for a decade, Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus, and Michelle Knight were allegedly raped and beaten by Ariel Castro, who now faces multiple charges of kidnapping and rape. The harrowing story of the women's captivity and miraculous escape has captivated the United States -- and the world. But just how exceptional a case is it?

Both in the United States and abroad, women are regularly imprisoned, used as sex slaves, and subjected to terrible violence. A 2012 International Labor Organization study found that 4.5 million people around the world are victims of forced sexual exploitation, and that 98 percent of these are women (79 percent of victims were adults, and 21 percent children). The ILO mapped overall forced labor by region in the graphic below:

Still, these statistics only capture sexual exploitation for profit -- not cases in which women are locked up and preyed upon by their captors. There's less data on these types of incidents, but they have certainly cropped up around the world as well.

Take the case of Natascha Kampusch in Austria. Abducted as a 10-year-old in 1998 -- on the first day her mother allowed her to walk to school on her own -- Kampusch grew up in captivity outside Vienna under the stern eye of her master, Wolfgang Priklopil, a communications technician. Kept in a tiny cell at night, Kampusch was subjected to repeated beatings, compelled to do housework half-naked, and kept weak and malnourished. The sexual abuse, she says, was minor; rather, she served as another character in Priklopil's delusions (he saw her as his loyal Aryan companion). They sometimes shared meals, and once went skiing together. Convinced that Priklopil would kill her, himself, and any bystanders if she tried to escape, Kampusch grew too afraid to run away.

On Aug. 23, 2006, however, Kampusch, now 18, was vacuuming Priklopil's car in the driveway of their house when he stepped away to take a phone call. Leaving the vacuum running to mask her escape, Kampusch walked away on an impulse. When Priklopil realized she had escaped, he confessed to his best friend and then stepped in front of a train, killing himself. When Kampusch learned of his death, she says she didn't cry but did get emotional. "He was part of my life," she explained. "That is why in a certain way I did mourn him." Kampusch, who wrote a memoir entitled 3,096 Days in Captivity (a film adaptation is in the works) and briefly hosted a talk show, has expressed interest in becoming a psychologist one day.

Though the Kampusch case received a great deal of attention in Austria, the media frenzy surrounding it paled in comparison with the case of Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his 18-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, in his cellar in Amstetten, Austria in 1984 and used her as his sex slave, fathering seven children with her over the course of the next two decades. Fritzl told his wife Rosemarie that their daughter had run away to join a cult and left three of her children, whom Josef and Rosemarie raised, at their doorstep when she was unable to care for them. Three other children (the seventh died shortly after birth, and was tossed in an incinerator) finally escaped when one had to be taken to the hospital. The three kids -- ages 19, 18, and 5 -- who emerged from Fritzl's cellar in 2008 had never before seen daylight. Fritzl was imprisoned for life in 2009, while the other family members have moved to an undisclosed location and been given new identities, according to AFP.

The sensational nature of the Fritzl case has obscured more common occurrences of women being held for long periods against their will. In 2000, for instance, Japanese police freed Fusako Sano, a 19-year-old woman who had been held for nine years by a man living with his mother and surfaced after visiting a hospital. Earlier this year, Indian police discovered that a 21-year-old woman had been held captive by a group of men for over a year and forced into prostitution.

And these are just some of the cases we know about.

There are a lot of crazy sports out there -- the Ironman triathlon, volcano boarding, and crocodile bungee jumping all come to mind -- and then there's this: The New York Times has a story today about the Battle of the Nations, an insane, full-contact, medieval combat reenactment that ends only when all the participants have been bludgeoned into the ground.

More from the Times:

The Battle of the Nations consists of four fighting formats: 1 on 1; 5 on 5; 21 on 21; and all against all, in which some opposing squads join forces. Winners of each match are decided by which side has the last fighter, or fighters, standing. A combatant bows out when three body parts, which include the feet, are touching the ground. Matches involving fewer fighters are usually over within a couple minutes, while the all-versus-all match can last up to 10 minutes....

Weapons must be blunted. Stabbing or thrusting, which [U.S. team executive officer Jaye] Brooks defined as repeatedly delivering excess force to the same point of contact, is not allowed. Fighters can hit any region in the "kill zone," which excludes the feet, back of knees, groin, back of neck and base of skull. Vertical strikes to the spine and horizontal strikes to the back of the neck are forbidden.

Injuries have included dislodged teeth and broken or severed fingers. In the United States, the athletes also undergo baseline testing to check for the possibility of concussions.

This year's competition will be the United States' second (last year the U.S. team finished 4th out of 14 teams), and it will be looking to knock off top-ranked Russia, which has dominated the sport since its inception in 2009. Here's a video of Russia beating up on the United States in 2012:

So what kind of person tries out for the Battle of the Nations, you ask? Here's what one U.S. team member told the Times: "This is the perfect sport for someone who wishes to participate in one of the roughest sports on earth, has a love of armor and weapons and Western martial arts, and a desire to be as close to being a knight of old as is possible in this modern age."

Who's ready to sign up?

Yemen's transitional government is signaling that it may release Abdulelah Haider Shaye, a Yemeni journalist who was arrested in August 2010 and who U.S. intelligence officials believe supported al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Shaye was sentenced to five years in prison in January 2011 in a trial that drew condemnation from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and human rights and journalist advocacy organizations have since campaigned for his release.

In a meeting with U.N. officials on Monday, Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi told reporters that he has made plans to release Shaye, Yemen's al-Masdar reports. Al Jazeera bureau chief Saeed Thabit Saeed, who attended the meeting, wrote on Facebook, "We received a serious promise from [Hadi] that our colleague Abdulelah Shaye will be released," and Times of London correspondent Iona Craig confirmed with Hadi's office that there "is an order from the president to release Shaye soon."

This is not the first time that Shaye's release has been considered. In fact, soon after his 2011 trial, Shaye's release seemed imminent. "We were waiting for the release of the pardon -- it was printed out and prepared in a file for the president to sign and announce the next day," Shaye's lawyer, Abdulrahman Barman, told Jeremy Scahill in his new book, Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield. But that plan fell through after a Feb. 2 phone call between then-President Ali Abdullah Saleh and President Barack Obama, in which Obama "expressed concern over the release of [Shaye], who had been sentenced to five years in prison for his association with AQAP," according to a readout of the call released by the White House.

The White House's position hasn't changed in the ensuing two years. "We remain concerned about al-Shai's potential early release due to his association with Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told FP by email on Wednesday.

Nor, for that matter, is Shaye's release certain. Mohammed al-Basha, a spokesperson for the Yemeni embassy in Washington, walked back reports of the journalist's imminent release, telling FP that President Hadi had only agreed to consider ending Shaye's detention.

Shaye's investigative work drew international attention in 2009 when he reported that the United States had conducted an airstrike that killed 41 civilians in the Yemeni village of al-Majalla, and managed to interview New Mexico-born AQAP cleric Anwar al-Awlaki on multiple occasions.

In July 2010, the Yemeni government arrested and beat Shaye, and interrogators told him, "We will destroy your life if you keep on talking," according to Scahill's account. Shaye was arrested a month later, beaten again, held in solitary confinement for 34 days without access to a lawyer, and then rushed through a trial on charges that included recruiting and propagandizing for AQAP and encouraging the assassination of President Saleh and his son. By the time Obama intervened in Shaye's pardon in 2011, protesters had begun filling city streets calling for the end of Saleh's three-decade presidency; Saleh resigned in November 2011, and since then his vice president, Hadi, has governed as part of what is slated to be a two-year period of reform and transition.

The U.S. government's case against Shaye is unclear. U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Gerald Feierstein told Craig in February 2012 that "Shaye is in jail because he was facilitating al Qaeda and its planning for attacks on Americans," but did not elaborate. Before Shaye's arrest, an U.S. intelligence official, who told Scahill that he "was persuaded that [Shaye] was an agent," discouraged journalists from working with Shaye on account of "'classified evidence' indicat[ing] that Shaye was 'cooperating' with al Qaeda."

Since his imprisonment, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the International Federation of Journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and the Yemen-based Freedom Foundation have campaigned for Shaye's release, and last November Yemeni Justice Minister Murshid al-Arashani publicly demanded that Hadi issue a pardon. Though it appears the Yemeni president may be preparing to meet that request, Shaye's family remains doubtful. "It's like the same as previous promises," Shaye's brother Khaled told Craig. "So far this is the fourth time Hadi has made this promise."

On Tuesday, the U.N. Human Rights Council announced the three individuals who will lead the body's first-ever human rights investigation into North Korea. In an interview with the Australian broadcaster ABC, new panel member Michael Kirby, a former justice of Australia's high court, acknowledged the challenges facing the probe but added, "the media gives North Korea a hard time and that maybe or may not be justified. We just have to, as a judge would, decide the matter on the basis of the material that's given to us and report faithfully and honestly."

North Korea is infamously opaque -- a New York Times article on Monday about "the black hole of North Korea intelligence gathering" argued that U.S. "understanding of North Korea's leadership and weapons systems has actually gotten worse." And the outside world may know less about North Korea's gulags -- thought to hold roughly 150,000 to 200,000 people -- than its weapons capabilities.

Not only will North Korea not cooperate with the investigation (it has never admitted to the existence of its gulags), but it's very likely that no one from the United Nations will be allowed to enter the country to investigate. Even if they are allowed to enter, they won't be able to get anywhere near the gulags -- and perhaps won't even make it outside the capital city of Pyongyang.

So how does one investigate human rights abuses in North Korea from Geneva and Seoul? The answer's pretty simple: defectors and satellite maps.

The most comprehensive testimony on human rights abuses in North Korea comes from the NGO Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, which in April 2012 released its second report on North Korea's hidden gulags:

In addition to the testimony and accounts from the former political prisoners in this report, this second edition of Hidden Gulag also includes satellite photographs of the prison camps. The dramatically improved, higher resolution satellite imagery now available through Google Earth allows the former prisoners to identify their former barracks and houses, their former work sites, execution grounds, and other landmarks in the camps. The report provides the precise locations exact degrees of latitude and longitude-of the political prison camps that North Korea proclaims do not exist.

The problem is, North Korea is so isolated from the rest of the world that some changes only become apparent months, if not years, after they occur. After defectors cross the Chinese border, for instance, it usually takes them years to be in a position to safely tell their stories. And satellite maps show buildings, but not people. The U.N.'s testimony will no doubt be extremely thorough,  but still woefully incomplete when judged by similar human rights inquiries. If, for example, North Korea were to shut down its gulags, how long would it take the rest of the world to discover they no longer exist?

Liberal commentators have dismissed today's hearings on the Obama administration's response to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate  in Benghazi as a purely political exercise aimed at scoring points against the Obama adminsitration rather than bringing new information to light about the events in question. But the bad news for the administration is that the American public seems to be more interested in the politics of Benghazi than the actual event. 

Here's a quick Google Trends chart showing the intensity of searches for "Benghazi" in the United States over the last 12 months:

Searches during the actual attack last September rated a score of 24 out of 100 on Google's scale, whereas searches maxed out at 100 -- the highest possible score -- around Election Day last year, when the Romney campaign was criticizing the administration for covering up information about the attack. Interest peaked again during David Petraeus's testimony on Nov. 16 (shortly after his controversial resignation from the CIA), when the State Department's internal review was released in December, around Hillary Clinton's memorable testimony in January, and again this week.

I've heard some say that Benghazi is an inside-the-Beltway story of little interest to the general public. But I think it may actually be the opposite. Beltway types-- particularly liberals, but some conservatives too -- are ready for this story to go away, but the public is still very much interested, and conservative media outlets in particular have continued to beat the drum. The administration may grumble that senators are politicizing a tragedy, but for the public, this has always been a political story. 

Today, the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform is convening its long-awaited hearing on the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi -- one that will feature a group of self-described "whistleblowers" from inside the State Department.

According to leaked copies of their testimonies, the witnesses -- Mark Thompson, acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism; Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission/chargé d'affairs in Libya; and Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer and former regional security officer in Libya -- will testify that the State Department rebuffed requests for additional security at the consulate and that the Obama administration denied a request to send a team of special forces to Benghazi. According to the witnesses, U.S. soldiers could have made it to the consulate in time to save lives, though that is a highly contentious allegation.

The controversial testimony is sure to generate heated debate among the lawmakers assembled. Here's a guide to what you can expect from the most high-profile antagonists in today's hearing:

Darrell Issa

Best known for lobbing endless accusations at the Obama administration for the botched "Fast and Furious" operation at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Issa, the committee's chairman, is now staking a claim as a major player in Republican efforts to keep the White House's feet to the fire on Benghazi. On Monday, Issa, a California Republican, told CBS News that there is "no question" that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's inner circle and possibly the secretary herself were involved in covering up the State Department's handling of the Benghazi attack.

"If Hillary Clinton is not responsible for the before, during and after mistakes ... it's somebody close. There certainly are plenty of people close to the former secretary who knew, and apparently were part of the problem," Issa told CBS.

Jason Chaffetz

A darling of the Tea Party, Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, has accused the Obama administration of seeking to suppress the testimony of the witnesses slated to appear. "There are people who want to testify that have been suppressed," he told Fox News Sunday. "They're scared to death of what the State Department is doing with them."

Expect Chaffetz to advance the ball on allegations that the U.S. military could have responded to distress calls at the Benghazi consulate. On Monday, he told Fox News that the military was told to "stand down" and that after the attacks the Obama administration worked to cover up orders for the military to not respond to the attack.

Trey Gowdy

A South Carolina Republican, Gowdy is the man behind much of the hype leading up to today's hearing. "There are more Benghazi hearings coming; I think they're going to be explosive," he told Fox News in late April. But don't just expect grandstanding from Gowdy. A former prosecutor, Gowdy told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he is concerned his Republican colleagues won't sufficiently focus on fact-finding during the hearing, and that he has been working behind the scenes to educate his colleagues about the art of interrogation. "So I have worked with, now, four of my colleagues whose backgrounds are not in litigation, how to ask these questions in a precise, pithy way that makes the witness the star and not some arm-flailing congressman who wants to be on YouTube," Gowdy told Hewitt.

Expect Gowdy to pursue some interesting lines of questioning. Here's what he promised Hewitt:

My fear over the weekend was that a lot of the information that I thought would be most interesting tomorrow has already been released. So I went to staff, and I went to others, and said with any jury trial, you have to save something back. You have to be interesting on the day of the trial. And I have been assured, in fact, I know, because I've seen it myself, there's going to be new, provocative, instructive, dare not use the word explosive, but there's going to be information that comes out tomorrow that whether people have been so desensitized to government lying to them that they don't care anymore, I cannot speak to that. But if you're interested in Benghazi, there is going to be enough new material tomorrow to make you absolutely livid that it's taken eight months for us to get to this point.

Elijah Cummings

The ranking Democrat on the committee, Cummings has been lambasting Republicans for politicizing the attacks. Expect him to describe the hearing as an exercise in partisan politics. "[Republicans] have leaked snippets of interview transcripts to national media outlets in a selective and distorted manner to drum up publicity for their hearing," Cummings said in a press release. "This is investigation by press release and does a disservice to our common goal of ensuring that our diplomatic corps serving overseas has the best protection possible to do its critical work."

Stephen Lynch

Fresh off losing the Democratic primary in Massachusetts' special election to replace former Senator John Kerry, Stephen Lynch has been doing battle with Jason Chaffetz in recent days. During Wednesday's hearing, he'll likely be one of the louder Democratic voices pushing back on Republican claims. "This has been a one- sided investigation, if you want to call it that," Lynch told Fox on Sunday. "There's been no sharing of information in a significant way with the Democrats staff members who usually conduct this type of investigation. And I think it's disgraceful, to be honest with you."

Grab some popcorn. It should be a good show.