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Afghan education officials have found themselves embroiled in controversy after a record number of students failed in national university entry exams last week. Afghan students accuse the Higher Education Ministry, which determines university placement, of fraud and discrimination, insisting that as many as 60,000 of them failed purely on the basis of their ethnicity and mother language.

Thousands of university students in Uzbekistan are being mobilized to help with the annual cotton harvest and some say they are working under abusive conditions, RFE/RL's Uzbek Service reports. The harvest lasts from the beginning of the academic year in September until late autumn and only students at prestigious universities in Tashkent are exempt from taking part. The use of student and child labor to pick cotton violates state and international labor laws.