Fernando Llano/AP; Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters, via Landov

A massive brawl in Venezuela’s National Assembly left several politicians with broken bones and bruises. Mac Margolis on post-Chávez trouble.

If there was any question about what Venezuelan politics would be like after the death of longtime President Hugo Chávez, last night’s violent session, which turned the National Assembly into a carnival of flying fists, feet, and invective, left little doubt and plenty of foreboding.To call it a dust-up would be risibly misleading. Around 7 p.m. local time, beefy security guards clad in Windbreakers emblazoned with the patented yellow, blue, and red colors of the national flag attacked—there’s no politer word for it—members of the Venezuelan opposition in the wood-paneled assembly hall.

Hoshang Hashimi/AP

A group of Taliban leaders are challenging those who say they speak for Muhammad Omar, the organization’s absent chief. Ron Moreau reports on the leadership crisis.   

Abdul Qayyum Zakir, the Taliban’s abrasive, often brutal, senior military commander, received a summons from the Quetta shura, the insurgency’s ruling council, last December. The shura’s verbal message was brief, blunt, and shocking: Mullah Mohammad Omar, the Taliban’s supreme leader, had decided to remove Zakir from his powerful position and to promote Zakir’s rival and co-equal, Akhtar Mohammad Mansoor, to become the insurgency's undisputed number-one military man.

Ole Solvang

Hundreds of dead, some as young as 11, have washed up in Aleppo, victims of a seemingly unending civil war.

Syrian men don’t usually cry. But for Yasser, the memory of his son, Mohammed, hurt too much. Sitting in the dark inside his shop on a bustling market street in Aleppo, the 63-year-old, hunched over in his chair, kept asking me: “Why did he deserve to die that way?” Yasser’s grief over his son who was apparently executed is shared by far too many Syrians caught up in this grisly war.A clothes seller on one of Aleppo’s market streets, Mohammed had never been involved with the armed opposition, his father told me.

Abdul Majeed Forjani/AP

“Disorder and terror” have gripped Libya following the blast at the French Embassy, and rumors swirl of another attack. Jamie Dettmer reports on the rising tension in the capital.

Diplomatic missions here in the Libyan capital are observing the strictest security procedures following suspicions that the bombers behind last Tuesday’s blast at the French Embassy have rigged a second car with explosives and are hunting for another high-profile Western target.Embassy protection teams and private security contractors working with foreign businessmen and nongovernmental organizations are on high alert, and the United Nations compound on the outskirts of Tripoli has introduced onerous security measures and placed severe restrictions on the movement of their diplomats.

Munir uz Zaman/AFP/Getty

The list of retailers whose clothing was made at the Bangladesh factory complex where the collapse has killed nearly 400 is growing. Nina Strochlic on the unending cycle of tragedies.

Was your shirt or jeans stitched by one of the nearly 1,000 garment workers who were injured or killed in the recent factory collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh? You might want to check the label.In the week since an eight-story, four-factory complex collapsed in Bangladesh, online records and physical debris revealed a growing list of international retailers tied to the suppliers housed in the Rana Plaza building. More than a dozen brands have been identified—including big names like The Children’s Place, Benetton, Mango, and Primark—and a number of these companies have emerged to explain their association with the shoddily built, illegal bloc that housed the factories.

Arif Ali/AFP/Getty

The candidates competing in the May elections are nothing if not a colorful bunch.

Actors, pop stars, disgraced politicians, alleged terrorists, and even a former pinup girl—Pakistan’s freewheeling general elections have always attracted a motley crew of candidates. And as the country prepares for its first transition from a fully civilian-elected government to another, this year is proving no exception, with 15,629 candidates competing for the 849 seats in the national and four provincial assemblies. Here are some of the more colorful candidates of the 2013 elections, which take place May 11: THE CRICKET CAPTAIN Imran Khan Just a few months ago, it seemed the elections were Khan’s to lose.

Eduardo Martino

As one of Brazil’s biggest landowners, Kátia Abreu rides a horse to work and never shuns a fight.

The Brazilian cerrado is no place for a tenderfoot. In the dry season in Aliança, the township just below the Amazon basin where Kátia Abreu farms, a withering sun leaves the land parched and choked in dust. A few months later, from November to May, downpours lash the dirt into a moonscape of potholes and mud. Many planters have stumbled here, and their tumbledown plots are strewn like headstones along the savanna. But for those who endure, fortunes can bloom.

NOOR, Corbis, Getty (4)

Darkly Digital Over the past few years as we’ve watched the digital revolution help bring about political and social revolutions around the world, it has seemed inevitable that the Internet would set people free. But think again, say Jared Cohen of the Council on Foreign Relations and Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google. “Technology doesn’t just help the good guys pushing for democratic reform,” they write in an essay posted on the council’s website, CFR.

Robin Utrecht/AFP/Getty

It should be a huge party Tuesday, when Willem-Alexander becomes the first Dutch king since 1890. But the Boston blasts and Dutch citizens joining jihadists have heightened security fears, reports Nadette De Visser.

Amsterdam is preparing for a spectacular celebration Tuesday, when Queen Beatrix will step down from the throne she’s held for 33 years to make way for her son Willem-Alexander, who will be crowned king. He will be, in fact, the first king of the Netherlands since 1890, when King Willem III died and three generations of impressive queens followed. The ceremony at the Nieuwe Kerk on Dam Square should be a model of stately splendor.Yet as the festivities begin—the parties, the music, the outdoor markets—there’s also an undercurrent of deep concern.

Shawn Graft / Samahope

Donors give the gift of prenatal care to women in developing countries as a tribute to mom.

In 2011, Tiangay, a 16-year-old girl from Sierra Leone, was brutally raped by her high-school teacher. She received traditional care for the damage she suffered, but soon became dehydrated, weak from blood loss, and nearly unable to walk. Seeking treatment at West Africa Fistula Foundation (WAFF), she underwent a fistula-repair surgery via donations from Samahope, a crowd-funding website for surgeries. “You saved my life,” she told her doctor, WAFF’s founder Darius Maggi, as she prepared to return to her goal of attending nursing school.