Been getting a big software release out this week, so just haven’t had time to blog. Things should ease up after Friday. I will be taking some vacation time next week, though, so blogging might remain sporadic for a few days.

A brief world news roundup for 14 July 2008.

United States & the Americas

• NY Times - To President Bush, the free-trade deal his administration negotiated with Colombia has something for everyone. Yet the trade agreement remains a long shot, because of opposition by American labor unions, Democratic leaders in Congress and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
• East Valley Tribune - Terrorism liaison officers have been getting a lot of attention in the national press lately. But the bottom line of what they do is basically old-fashioned police work, according to the state police coordinating the effort in Arizona.
• Instapundit - CANADIAN KANGAROO COURT UPDATE: Levant to Congress: put Canada on the watch list of human rights abusers. Seems fitting.
• CSM - After a series of setbacks, leftist President Hugo Chávez welcomed his conservative nemesis – Colombia’s Álvaro Uribe – to a reconcilatory meeting on Friday.
• COHA - The relationship between Bolivia and Peru has deteriorated rapidly over the last year, in part because of disagreements on foreign trade issuess.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Press TV - Russia has cut oil supplies to the Czech Republic following last week’s signing of a Prague-Washington missile defense agreement.
• RIA Novosti - Russian energy giant Gazprom [RTS: GAZP] and Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum will sign on Sunday a memorandum of cooperation in the oil and gas sphere, an Iranian deputy oil minister said.
• Moscow Times - Georgia will shoot down any Russian fighter jets that violate its airspace, two senior Georgian officials said Friday, a day after Russia’s admission that it had flown sorties over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia.
• Tehran Times - Two policemen were shot dead overnight in the Elbrus district of Russia’s unstable Caucasus region, Russian news agencies quoted a prosecution official as saying on Sunday. The attack took place in the village of Neitrino, home to a Soviet-era observatory in the mountains near the border with Georgia, said Rashid Urusov, chief investigative prosecutor for the Kabardino-Balkaria region where the village is located.

Middle East

• Independent - All over Baghdad and southern Iraq, supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shia cleric, are harassed, on the run or in jail. The black-shirted gunmen of his Mehdi Army militia no longer rule in Shia parts of Baghdad, Basra and Amara where once their control was total.
• ABC - Gunmen attacked a soccer game north of Baghdad on Sunday, killing a policeman and a Sunni Muslim allied with the U.S. against al-Qaida, the U.S. military said. The attack near Duluyiah, 45 miles north of Baghdad, also wounded three others, including a 9-year-old and a second member of the local U.S.-backed awakening council, the military said.
• AP - The Israeli government said it will swap prisoners with the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah on Wednesday. The prison service said Sunday Israel would free five Lebanese, including the perpetrator of one of the most notorious attacks in Israeli history. In exchange, Hezbollah will return two soldiers it captured in a cross-border raid that sparked the 2006 war. Israel believes the soldiers are dead.
• INN - In addition to recent reports of P.M. Olmert’s possible willingness to relinquish Israel’s control over Har Dov, Hizbullah is already threatening another area of northern Israel. Hizbullah commander Sheikh Abd-al-Amir Kiblan declared that the current ransom deal does not satisfy the terrorist organization. They want the Galilee.
• Jerusalem Post - Lebanon’s prime minister formed a national unity Cabinet on Friday after six weeks of wrangling over how to distribute posts among members of the country’s Western-backed parliamentary majority and the Hizbullah-led opposition. Plans for the 30-member Cabinet were laid out in an Arab League-brokered deal in May, which also gave Hizbullah and its allies veto power over all government decisions.

Iran

• Babylon and Beyond - U.S. Sen. John McCain made a wisecrack last week describing reports of increased American cigarette exports to Iran as a way of killing off Iranians. It was just a joke, the presumptive presidential candidate insisted immediately afterward. Today, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini responded to the comment, and he was not smiling at all.
• The News - Iran said on Sunday it had discovered a new oil field in the hydrocarbon-rich province of Khuzestan with more than one billion barrels of crude in place. Iranian Oil Minister Ghulam Hussain Nozari said the oil field held 1.1 billion barrels of sweet crude oil, of which 233 million was recoverable.

Southeast Asia

• military.com - A multi-pronged militant assault on a small, remote U.S. base killed nine American Soldiers and wounded 15 Sunday near the village of Wanat in the mountainous northeastern province of Kunar.
• AFPS - At least 40 insurgents were killed during an ongoing operation in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, military officials said. The fight began when insurgent forces attacked an Afghan and coalition security patrol yesterday in Sangin district. The friendly forces destroyed four insurgent fortified fighting positions, two bunkers, two trench lines, one IED site, and more than 30 enemy boats.
• Scotsman - A Taliban suicide bomber killed up to 20 civilians, most of them children, and four police officers in southern Afghanistan. The bomber, travelling on a motorcycle, targeted a police vehicle in a bazaar in the Deh Rawood district of Uruzgan province. As well as the fatalities, a further 37 civilians and five police officers were injured.
• Dawn - Unidentified gunmen abducted a member of the upper house of parliament Abdul Wali Ahmadzai on Sunday from Logar province which lies to the south of capital Kabul, officials said. Earlier, Taliban insurgents killed two women detective police officers and dumped their bodies in a ditch in a graveyard in Ghazni province on Saturday evening, a senior provincial police officer said. Separately, a NATO-led ISAF soldier died on Saturday from injuries he had suffered in a blast in Baghlan province, the alliance said. On the other hand, four Taliban insurgents were killed and six more were wounded in an operation by Afghan forces in Nuristan on Saturday.
• Ghosts of Alexander - Why Nuristan Matters; Show this map to an old Soviet officer who served in the region and he will tell you that those routes look exactly like the mujahideen infiltration routes from the 1980s.
• The News - Twenty-five people, including 17 troops, four civilians and five militants, were killed and several others injured when the local Taliban ambushed a convoy of the security forces near the Zargari Bazaar in the troubled Hangu district on Saturday afternoon.
• NY Times - The takeover of the Ziarat marble quarry, a coveted national asset, is one of the boldest examples of how the Taliban have made Pakistan’s tribal areas far more than a base for training camps or a launching pad for sending fighters into Afghanistan.
• AP - Pakistan’s top diplomat said Saturday there are no U.S. or other foreign military personnel on the hunt for Osama bin Laden in his nation, and none will be allowed in to search for the al-Qaida leader.
• CSM - Pakistan in quandary over how to deal with rising militant threats; There appears to be little consensus over meeting multifaceted challenges that are driven by varying agendas.
• Daily Times - Militants beheaded a man in North Waziristan on Sunday alleging that he was spying for the US. Locals found the beheaded body of Muhammad Ghani, a resident of Bannu, at Kharqamar, 45 kilometres west of Miranshah on Miranshah-Dattakhel Road.
• Times of India - Close on the heels of the killing of JD(U) MLA Ramesh Singh Munda in neighbouring Jharkhand on July 9, Maoists displayed their firepower again when they attacked a block office and a police station and blew up railway tracks in Jamui district in the wee hours of Friday.
• Colombo Page - Sri Lankan army commandos captured two LTTE bunkers in the embattled northern region while advancing troops killed 22 Tamil Tigers in heavy confrontations, the military said.
• NY Sun - Sri Lanka is ready to hold talks with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam if the rebels disarm, President Rajapaksa said. The Sri Lankan military has stepped up its offensive in the country’s north by staging almost daily attacks on rebel bases.

Far East & Pacific

• BBC - North Korea has rejected an offer by the South Korean president to resume talks that he suspended in February. Mr Lee was criticised in the South for offering to restart the talks so soon after a South Korean tourist was shot dead by a North Korean soldier.
• Gulf News - Pope Benedict XVI began a pilgrimage in Australia on Sunday, saying he wants to use his visit to raise awareness about global warming and to address the crisis of clergy sexual abuse.

Europe

• Khaleej Times - Leaders and representatives from 43 nations were set to meet Sunday in Paris to launch the Union for the Mediterranean, an ambitious project intended to deepen relations between the EU and countries along the Mediterranean Basin.
• France24 - Bronislaw Geremek, one of the leading lights in Poland’s anti-Communist Solidarity movement and former Foreign Minister, was killed in a car accident on Sunday near the Polish town of Lubien.
• Reuters - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Sunday oil-consuming countries should meet to fix a maximum price they were prepared to pay for oil or they would have to invest heavily in nuclear power.
• Spiegel - Germany has called on its partners in the Eurofighter project, Britain, Spain and Italy, to resume stalled talks and divide up the delivery of the last tranche of fighter jets, Der Spiegel has learned. Failure to break the deadlock could put the project in a “critical situation,” a German official warned.

Africa

• Press Association - Somali troops have shot dead seven civilians in southern Mogadishu after accusing them of being Islamic insurgents. A Somali aid worker affiliated to the UN World Food Programme was also shot dead in a separate incident, according to witnesses.
• International Criminal Court - On Monday 14 July, Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo will submit to the Judges of Pre-Trial Chamber I his evidence on crimes committed in the whole of Darfur over the last five years.
• MSNBC - An indictment of Sudan’s president for war crimes in Darfur would be “disastrous” for the region and could affect humanitarian organizations working there, a Sudanese government spokesman said Saturday.
• BBC - The BBC has found the first evidence that China is currently helping Sudan’s government militarily in Darfur. The Panorama TV programme tracked down Chinese army lorries in the Sudanese province that came from a batch exported from China to Sudan in 2005. The BBC was also told that China was training fighter pilots who fly Chinese A5 Fantan fighter jets in Darfur.
• IPS - The Soviet-era connections between Russia and some African states have collapsed into low levels of economic engagement between the former partners, with the arms trade remaining the exception.
• canada.com - Canada has sent three warships to the Horn of Africa to help thwart swarms of modern-day Long John Silvers and Jack Sparrows who have been terrorizing maritime traffic in these distant waters.
• Magharebia - Moroccan security forces have managed to dismantle four terror cells since January and will probably break up another four by the end of the year, Moroccan domestic intelligence chief Abdelhak Bassou said.

The Global War

• Stars and Stripes - Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan and other ships in its strike group will get a close-up look at South Korea’s major seaport during a goodwill visit there in the coming week, the Navy said Friday.
• LA Times - Hezbollah wages on-air war against U.S.; The militant group’s Al Manar TV channel, accessible throughout the Middle East and online, uses its programs to criticize American policies daily.
• Newsweek - A Smarter Way to Fight; He was the brains behind ‘Charlie Wilson’s War.’ Now his tactics are hot, from Pakistan to Colombia.
• Lowy Institute - Some recent miscalculations have shown that even Hizbullah can be vulnerable politically. In this new Lowy Institute Perspectives paper, Chief of Army Visiting Fellow Rodger Shanahan argues that despite its recent successes, like all political parties it faces challenges in the future.
• MEMRI - The Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa reported, citing a Syrian opposition party in the U.S., that Hizbullah is arming its short-range missiles, which are mostly intended for use against Israel, with chemical agents such as mustard gas and nerve gas, obtained from North Korea.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 11 July 2008.

United States & the Americas

• AP - The stunning rescue of Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. military contractors owed its success not just to artful deception, but also to a five-year U.S.-Colombian operation that choked their captors’ ability to communicate.
• McClatchy - Three weeks after a stinging rebuke from congressional auditors, the Pentagon announced Wednesday that it will reopen bidding for a $35 billion contract to start replacing the Air Force’s aging fleet of aerial refueling tankers.
• White House - President Bush Signs H.R. 6304, FISA Amendments Act of 2008
• Newsweek - Former FARC hostage Ingrid Betancourt discusses faith, trauma and survival.
• canada.com - Gunmen killed 16 people, including a police chief, in a spate of separate shootouts across Mexico, which is grappling with a spike in drug-related violence, local officials said Thursday.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• BBC - Georgia is to recall its ambassador from Russia after Moscow admitted its fighter jets had entered Georgian airspace earlier this week. Moscow said its jets were above Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia to “cool hot heads in Tbilisi”.
• VOA - Uzbek officials say three people were killed and 21 others injured in a series of explosions at an ammunition depot at a military base in southern Uzbekistan. The Uzbek Emergencies Ministry Thursday said the explosions began after a fire broke out at a Soviet-era missile and artillery ammunition depot in the town of Kagan.
• Turkish Daily News - Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan has proposed a fresh start with Turkey, with the goal of normalizing relations and opening the border between the two countries that has been closed for almost 15 years.

Middle East

• AP - The U.S. military says it has detained 30 suspected al-Qaida in Iraq militants during three days of operations in Baghdad and north of the capital. The military says in a statement that 10 have been taken in the Tigris River valley and include the alleged leader of an al-Qaida in Iraq bombing network.
• LA Times - Prime Minister Nouri Maliki on Thursday promised to help his Turkish counterpart crack down on Kurdish guerrillas along Turkey’s border, as Iraq attempts to mend relations with its neighbors.
• National Post - Hamas arrested three Palestinians who fired rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip on Thursday, a militant faction said, in the first such detentions since the Islamist group and Israel agreed a truce last month.
• CSM - Syrian prison riot shrouded in silence; The unrest in the facility, which holds more than 10,000 Islamists, democracy activists, and intellectuals, in addition to regular criminals, comes as the West moves to reengage with Damascus.
• Daily Star - Nearly 70 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition group in Egypt, have been arrested and detained in two days north of Cairo, a security service official said on Thursday.

Iran

• Fars News - Iran test-fired more long- and medium-range missiles Thursday in a third day of military exercises in the Persian Gulf waters. The weapons fired by the IRGC overnight have special capabilities and included missiles launched from naval ships in the Persian Gulf, as well as torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles.
• CSM - The show of force may also be part of an attempt to cover over Iran’s weaknesses and to draw attention away from signs that the international community’s efforts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program are having an impact. Almost lost in an aggressive verbal exchange that continued Thursday, with a reminder to Tehran from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the US will defend its interests and allies, was an announcement by French energy corporation Total. It said it was canceling plans to invest in Iran’s energy sector by developing one of Iran’s natural gas fields.
• MEMRI - Three opponents of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – former finance minister Danesh J’afari and former MPs Reza Talaei Nik and Ali Asgari – have joined the Expediency Council which is headed by Ahmadinejad’s main political rival Hashemi Rafsanjani.
• Cardinalpark - Lost in the current fog of speculation surrounding the status of Iran’s nuclear program is a consensus view of Iran’s objectives. To me, it’s quite clear what those goals are, and Iran’s behavior on the eve of the US elections bring these into even sharper focus.

Southeast Asia

• ISAF - A joint Afghan National Security Forces and ISAF unit killed a known Taliban sub-commander during an early morning operation in Lowgar province. mohammed Daud Rahimi was the sub-commander of Taliban forces in Lowgar province.
• Guardian - Nine British soldiers have been wounded in a “friendly fire incident” in Afghanistan, when an Apache attack helicopter mistakenly attacked them in a skirmish with Taliban fighters, the Ministry of Defence said last night.
• DoD - Army Col. John Cuddy, commander of the Regional Police Advisory Command-South in Kandahar, Afghanistan, spoke with bloggers about challenges and progress with the focused district development (FDD) reform program for Afghan police. The FDD program rotates district police forces through eight weeks of rigorous training.
• AKI - At least six people were killed and nine others injured on Thursday in landmine blasts in Pakistan’s tribal region which borders Afghanistan. According to a report on the website of Pakistan’s Geo TV channel, there were two separate blasts in the Kurram tribal region.
• BBC - A leading militant in Pakistan’s Khyber region, Mangal Bagh, has struck a peace deal with the local administration to end nearly two weeks of fighting. Paramilitary troops started an operation in late June against Mangal Bagh and other Islamist militants.
• NY Times - American military and intelligence officials say there has been an increase in recent months in the number of foreign fighters who have traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas to join with militants there. The flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are seeking to take up arms against the West, these officials say.
• Dawn - At least seven persons have been killed and twelve critically injured in three separate bomb explosions in different parts of Lower Kurram on Thursday.
• NY Sun - Even with India’s last-minute revival of a languishing civil nuclear accord with America, it may be too late for an election-year Congress to ratify what has been one of President Bush’s top foreign policy initiatives.
• Colombo Page - Sri Lanka Air Force spokesman Wing Commander Janaka Nanayakkara said that two senior Tamil Tiger leaders were killed in night air raids carried out on identified targets in the Vaddakachchi area.

Far East & Pacific

• BBC - Senior diplomats are meeting in Beijing to thrash out the next move in the long-running mission to end North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. US envoy Christopher Hill said talks would seek to agree practical steps to verify North Korea’s account of its nuclear programme, provided last month.
• Irish Times - Thailand’s foreign minister Noppadon Pattama has resigned after a top court ruled he violated the constitution by signing a deal over a disputed temple on the Thai-Cambodian border. He is the second minister to leave the cabinet in two days.
• SMH - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd plugged his Asia-Pacific community plan during a whirlwind visit to Malaysia, while tip-toeing around political controversies swirling in the South-East Asian nation.
• MSNBC - A decade-long drought in Australia’s most important crop-growing region is worsening and there is little hope for relief from either saving rains or a new government conservation plan, officials said Thursday.
• news.com.au - Indonesia was overwhelmingly responsible for human rights abuses, including murder, rape and torture in East Timor, according to a leaked report from East Timorese and Indonesian authorities.
• Macleans - Indonesia has executed a man for killing 42 women and girls in a series of ritual slayings. He apparently believed the 11-year killing spree increase his magical powers.

Europe

• Hurriyet - Turkish media speculated that the attack against the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul was the work of an illegal group linked to al Qaeda. Three attackers, who died in the attack along with three police officers, have been identified as Turkish citizens, Istanbul Governor Muammer Guler said late on Wednesday. Four people were taken into custody as part of an investigation, Turkish Interior Minister Besir Atalay said.
• Spiegel - PKK separatists kidnapped three German mountain climbers on Tuesday. Now they say the men won’t be released until Germany abandons its “hostile policies” towards the Kurds. The action seems to be in response to Germany’s tougher policy toward the PKK in recent months.

Africa

• Shabelle - A full-scale war could break out within days between Puntland and its neighboring breakaway republic of Somaliland following Somaliland troops have seized the coastal town of Lasqoray from Puntland forces. Residents told Shabelle English service that Somaliland troops entered in the town without resistance.
• Khaleej Times - Somali insurgents said Thursday they had attacked one of the transitional government’s main military camps 25 kilometres east of Baidoa, the seat of the Horn of Africa nation’s parliament.
• New Times - Former members of the rebel Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR) have accused the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC) of selling back to them weapons that had been seized by the UN body during the disarmament process.
• IRIN - Burundi’s government has accused the rebel Palipehutu-Forces for National Liberation (FNL) of recruiting new combatants and delaying the peace process by insisting on political recognition before cantonment.
• AP - Nigeria’s main militant group said Thursday it would resume attacks in the country’s oil-rich delta region because of Britain’s pledge to support the government in the conflict there. A leader of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta told The Associated Press the group would abandon a two-week-old cease-fire as of midnight Saturday.

The Global War

• Javno - Walid bin Attash, a Yemeni accused of running an al Qaeda camp where two of the Sept. 11 hijackers trained in Afghanistan, told the U.S. military war court at Guantanamo on Thursday that he should have access to classified evidence against him, arguing that if he is executed the secrets will be safer than in the hands of the FBI or CIA. He described himself as proud of any role he played in attacks on the United States.
• Oil and Gas Journal - The International Energy Agency has released its outlook for 2009 oil supply and demand. In its latest monthly Oil Market Report, IEA said worldwide oil demand will increase by 860,000 b/d next year to average 87.7 million b/d. This year’s demand growth is forecast at 890,000 b/d.
• Ya Libnan - When Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric S. Edelman visited with top officials in Lebanon May 31, he brought more than just words of encouragement. Timed with his visit, a shipment of body armor, helmets and more than 1.3 million rounds of ammunition was delivered to the Lebanese Armed Forces — the latest installment in an ongoing program of military and economic aid that has made Lebanon, on a per capita basis, the second-highest recipient of U.S. assistance.
• AFIS - The Senate has confirmed Army Gen. David H. Petraeus as commander of U.S. Central Command and Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno to receive his fourth star and succeed Petraeus as commander of Multinational Force Iraq.
• Guido Steinberg, Strategic Insights - A Turkish al-Qaeda: The Islamic Jihad Union and the Internalization of Uzbek Jihadism
• Hudson Institute - The Roots of Violent Islamist Extremism and Efforts to Counter It; Testimony before the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, United States Senate by Zeyno Baran

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 9 July 2008.

United States & the Americas

• Hugh Hewitt - McCain On The Iranian Provocation
• Hughes and Johnson - Consider Mr. McCain’s trip last week to Colombia and Mexico. It’s a gutsy move, leaving the domestic campaign trail for a foreign policy trip in the midst of an historic, hotly contested election in which polls show him trailing. So what’s he up to?
• DID - Canada’s aging fleet of Oberon class submarines had become simply too old to put in the water. In July 2000, their de facto retirement became official. The question was: what, if anything, would replace them?
• LA Times - The capital city’s police chief and head prosecutor resigned Tuesday amid growing public outrage over a bungled bar raid that resulted in 12 deaths. The resignation of Police Chief Joel Ortega and prosecutor Rodolfo Felix came the same day the city’s Human Rights Commission issued a scathing denunciation of the deadly law enforcement crackdown last month on a club packed with teenagers celebrating the end of the school year.
• Independent - At least 46 people died in Bolivia when a truck loaded with goods and peasants lurched off a mountainous highway and fell nearly 1,000 feet, local media reported.
• Miami Herald - The Vietnam-era Huey helicopter took off Tuesday from an army base in Colombia’s rebel-controlled region on a mission to blast the Marxist fighters with the voice of Ingrid Betancourt, one of their former hostages. The military operation is part of a psy-ops campaign to persuade the estimated 60 rebels who were guarding Betancourt, three American contractors and 11 other hostages to desert the FARC.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• NY Sun - Echoing the bygone Cold War relationship between America and the Soviet Union, Russia’s foreign ministry is threatening a military response if America moves forward with installing a missile defense system in the Czech Republic.
• Russia Foreign Ministry - “There is an increasing amount of the confirmatory evidence that Georgia’s leadership has taken the path of deliberately fanning tension in relations with Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The aim of this is to destroy the peacekeeping architecture that has been in place in the region for decade and a half so as to replace it with new, suiting the Georgian side, mechanisms of settlement.”
• AFP - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was due in Georgia on Wednesday amid a sharp escalation in tensions between the United States and Russia over the strategic ex-Soviet state and European security.
• Moscow Times - Moscow-backed separatists in Georgia’s breakaway South Ossetia region detained four Georgian soldiers Tuesday, raising tension a day before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits Tbilisi.
• CRN - President of Abkhazia Sergey Bagapsh has announced that after the recent terror acts in the territory of his Republic, Abkhazia suspends all contacts with Georgia.
• Chatham House - The Politics of Russia’s Stagnating Oil Output
• Javno - Kazakhstan joined construction of a pan-Central Asia pipeline on Wednesday, a major project to link up Caspian Sea gas reserves with energy-hungry China. The pipeline is the first significant independent gas link connecting the former Soviet region with eastern markets while bypassing Russia. Russian gas monopoly Gazprom is currently the main buyer of Central Asian gas.
• RIA Novosti - Three people were killed and one injured when gunmen attacked a village in the southern Russian republic of Ingushetia, a local Interior Ministry official said on Wednesday.
• Congressional Research Service - Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia: Political Developments and Implications for U.S. Interests

Middle East

• CBS - The Iraqi military said Wednesday the number of “terrorist attacks” in June declined 85 percent from the same period a year ago. An average of 25 attacks took place each day in June, compared to 160 during the same month in 2007, said Iraqi army spokesman Maj. Gen. Qassim al-Mousawi during a press conference.
• AKI - Two leaders allegedly from the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq have been arrested in volatile Diyala province, the Voices of Iraq news agency reported on Tuesday.
• AFP - A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-filled car against the convoy of an Iraqi general in the main northern city of Mosul on Wednesday, killing seven people, the officer, who was unharmed, told AFP.
• Instapundit - A ROUNDUP OF NEWS FROM IRAQ at The Mudville Gazette. I predict that once Obama completes his pivot, you’ll be hearing more about this stuff from the Big Media folks.
• Aljazeera - At least two people have died and another 32 have been wounded in a fresh outbreak of violence in Tripoli, the northern Lebanese city.
• Tony Badran - Lebanon’s civil war has been one of the most complex, multifaceted wars of modern times due to its hybrid nature, multiple participants (both state and non-state actors), and its impact on regional, and even global balances of power. The goal of this article is to identify the principal combatants during the various stages of the war, their equipment, and tactics, with an emphasis on urban warfare and military operations in built-up areas.
• NY Times - In an increasingly divided Arab world, the Qataris have fashioned a reputation for themselves as independent-minded arbitrators who will cozy up to anyone — Iran, Israel, Chechen separatists — in pursuit of leverage at the bargaining table.
• Al Arabiya - Israeli troops raided the city hall of the West Bank town of Nablus on Wednesday, seizing computers and causing damage, Palestinian officials said. The troops also raided six mosques and confiscated three buses from an Islamic school in town, the officials said.
• RIA Novosti - Israel’s state-controlled radio claimed Wednesday that Islamic Hezbollah has increased its rocket arsenal threefold since the start of an armed conflict with Israel two years ago.
• Reuters - Taps have run dry in West Bank towns and Palestinians face acute water shortages as dry weather strains supplies already restricted by Israel, residents and the water authority said.
• MESH - Fighting between government forces and Shiite rebels in the mountainous governate of Sa’ada in the far north of Yemen has displaced approximately 130,000 people since 2004. This new situation map, prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and accurate as of July 3, 2008, shows the affected districts, the concentrations of displaced persons, and the sites of fighting and blocked roads.

Iran

• Reuters - Iran test-fired nine missiles on Wednesday and warned the United States and Israel it was ready to retaliate if they attacked the Islamic Republic over its disputed nuclear projects.
• IPS - A 15-page paper on the process requirements for casting and machining of uranium metal into hemispherical forms, said to be useful only for making the core of a nuclear weapon, has been raised by the IAEA in recent months as evidence of an alleged Iranian intention to built nuclear weapons.
• AKI - Five Iranian student activists from Mashat University, in the country’s west, were arrested on Tuesday night. In the past few days another five students - Towhid Dolatshenas, Mohammad Zeraati, Farzad Hassanzadeh, Sajjad Rahimi and Mohammad Mizban - have also been arrested.
• Corner - Iran News Roundup (It’s the best summary out there of news from Iran.)
• BBC - The US has imposed new financial sanctions on Iranian individuals and companies suspected of involvement in the country’s nuclear programme.
• Payvand - Photos: Poppy Flowers in Kkansar, Iran; Khansar is one of the counties of Esfahan Province in Iran. The name khansar comes from the Avestan language. Khun means spring and sar means place, so khansar means place of the spring.

Southeast Asia

• ABC - A U.S. Marines commander said Wednesday his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April.
• Times Online - Scottish troops trying to keep the peace in Afghanistan; The 30-strong patrol of US marines and Afghan National Police moves slowly through the Musa Qala bazaar, alert to any suspicious movements around them. This town in North Helmand may be held by coalition forces, but it is far from secure.
• Newsweek - How the bombing of Kabul’s Indian Embassy could affect the security of the region.
• TIME - Mahbooba Ahadgar’s choice to compete in a head scarf and full-length, body-covering running suit could not spare her from Taliban taunts and threats. The Afghan middle-distance runner trekked on nonetheless, and was on the verge of realizing her Olympic dream. But now Ahadgar — slated to be the only female Afghan athlete at the Beijing Games — has gone missing from her training site just weeks before the opening ceremonies.
• Korea Times - Taliban militants in Afghanistan have denied they are involved in smuggling chemicals from Korea to Afghanistan for use in making heroin. Korean police Friday claimed they had arrested two Afghans and some South Asian citizens and seized around 12 tons of acetic anhydride from their possession during a raid.
• BBC - Suspected militants ambushed a convoy of Pakistani paramilitary troops in the Khyber region of north-west Pakistan, killing four soldiers, officials said. The attack took place when their convoy was travelling to the base camp late at night. Three soldiers were wounded.
• McClatchy - The Islamic militia, linked with al Qaida, has controlled Darra Adam Khel for about six months. They’ve become such a routine sight in the town that no one pays them any attention. The security forces, when they emerge from their fort, don’t challenge the hot-blooded young militants. Even their presence outside the Pakistan Frontier Corp’s White Fort in Darra didn’t concern residents.
• Reuters - About 2,000 Islamist women gathered at the radical Red Mosque in the Pakistani capital on Wednesday and vowed to raise their children for holy war, days after a suicide bomber killed 18 people after a similar rally.
• AFP - At least 22 Tamil Tiger rebels and two government soldiers have died in the latest clashes in northern Sri Lanka, the island’s defence ministry said Wednesday. The fighting, which took place on Tuesday, was centred around the Weli Oya, Vavuniya and Mannar regions, the statement said.
• Asia Times - Gripped by civil war for over two decades, Sri Lanka is fast becoming a battleground for the two Asian giants - India and China. The looming struggle for influence has Delhi worried as the stage is on India’s southern doorstep. That influence is now being steadily eroded by China, Pakistan and a host of other countries. China’s military ties with Sri Lanka have strengthened, as has its role in the Sri Lankan economy.

Far East & Pacific

• BBC - Leaders from the world’s developed nations and rising economic powers have agreed on a “shared vision” on climate change at the G8 summit in Japan. But no definite agreements have been announced and India and China have reportedly dismissed a target to halve emissions by 2050.
• BBC - Chinese police have shot dead five alleged Muslim militants in the north-western region of Xinjiang, reports state news agency Xinhua.
• WSJ - Thailand’s Supreme Court ruled that a key ally of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was guilty of vote fraud, a verdict that could lead to the banning of the ruling pro-Thaksin People Power Party and deepen a two-year-long political crisis in one of Southeast Asia’s largest economies.
• LA Times - Despite a string of successes against allies of Al Qaeda, Indonesia is on alert for fresh attacks as it hunts an escaped extremist and braces for possible retaliation if it carries out the execution of three men convicted in a 2002 bombing. Last week, Indonesian anti-terrorism police arrested 10 suspected militants linked to Jemaah Islamiah, Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Southeast Asia.

Europe

• NY Times - A group of unidentified gunmen opened fire on Turkish security guards outside the United States Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Wednesday, the Turkish authorities said, and at least three police officers and three assailants were killed.
• Hurriyet - Three German tourists were kidnapped by terrorists in Turkey’s eastern province of Agri, the state-run Anatolian Agency reported Wednesday quoting the governor. “The terrorists said they carried out this action because of the German government’s recent moves against PKK associations and sympathizers,” the Anatolian Agency reported the Governor Mehmet Cetin as saying.
• Balkan Insight - The sale of a 51 percent stake in Serbia’s oil monopoly NIS to Russian energy giant Gazprom could be completed as early as August, a daily reports.
• France24 - The European Commission said Tuesday that it will give protesting EU fishermen a 600 million euro handout, to help “adjust to new realities” such as soaring fuel prices, overcapacity, and severely declining world fish stocks.
• Asharq Al Awsat - Islamist Abu Qatada, who was recently released from the Long Lartin Prison in northern England, is banned from contacting 20 Islamists in Europe most of whom are held in British jails.
• Russia Today - Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance has lost the documents detailing the Katyn massacre, when thousands of Polish officers were executed in 1940. The papers were handed over to Warsaw by Moscow in early 1990s after Russia admitted the Soviet Union’s involvement in the crime.
• Centre for European Policy Studies - The EU’s New Black Sea Policy: What Kind of Regionalism is This?

Africa

• Garowe - Somali pirates who have held a German-owned vessel and its 15-member crew for more than one month released the ship on Tuesday after receiving a ransom payment, a local mayor told Puntland-based Radio Garowe.
• CNN - Gunmen in southern Somalia have killed a truck driver carrying relief supplies for the World Food Programme, the fourth WFP driver killed in Somalia this year, the U.N. aid agency said Wednesday.
• Press TV - At least 37 Somali presidential guards have been killed and more than 30 others sustained injuries in clashes with al-Shabaab forces.
• BBC - Six members of the joint United Nations African Union peace mission in Sudan’s Darfur region have been killed in an attack, a UN source has told the BBC. Those who died included four Rwandan peacekeepers, one policeman from Ghana and another from Uganda.
• ABC - In Tanzania, like most of sub-Saharan Africa, people with albinism are often thought of as having supernatural powers, which makes them a target. At least 20 Tanzanians have been murdered this year alone, mutilated for their body parts, which are then sold on the black market by witch doctors.
• Hirondelle - Last week, Jean Pierre Bemba, leader of the opposition in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), was handed over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) after being arrested six weeks ago by Belgian police within the framework of an international arrest warrant.
• CSM - Nearly 800 people from Bomaru and nearby villages have gathered for Fambul Tok, a grass-roots reconciliation initiative John Caulker wants to bring to every Sierra Leonean village. Mr. Caulker, whose human rights organization, Forum of Conscience, developed Fambul Tok over the past three years in villages across Sierra Leone, wants the bonfire to be a space for confession and forgiveness for war crimes. Bomaru is the first test of whether the idea works –­ or whether anyone even cares.
• Magharebia - Algerian troops killed one terrorist and injured another in a weekend operation in Boudekhane, Khenchela wilaya, El Khabar reported on Monday. The terrorists were Libyan recruits to Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb, Algerian army officials reportedly told El Khabar. The army reportedly confiscated a large amount of guns and ammunition in the raid.

The Global War

• WTOC - We very rarely hear about United States Army Rangers.  But our nation and our world, would be a very different, and likely a much more dangerous place without them. The 1st Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment is based at Hunter Army Airfield and just recently changed commanders. We offer a WTOC Military Salute to the man who’s lead them through years of the war on terror, Col. Lee Rudacille.
• Thunder Run - From the Front: 07/09/2008; News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
• Guardian - The world food crisis is the biggest issue facing disaster relief charities and affects everything they do but it is hard to galavanise public support because there is no “big bang”, an aid expert said today.
• UPI - Fighters with al-Qaida of Mesopotamia are fleeing Iraq to set up safe havens in Somalia and Sudan, Iraqi security officials said Tuesday.
• The News - Worried about increasing insurgent attacks in Afghanistan, the US military says it is sending extra air power there by shifting an aircraft carrier away from the Iraq war. Defence officials said on Tuesday that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was moved from the Gulf and to the Gulf of Oman, shortening the time that the carrier’s strike planes must fly to support combat in Afghanistan.
• DoD Bloggers Roundtable - Army Col. Jimmie Keenan, the Warrior Care and Transition Office chief of staff, summarized key changes the Army is making to its policies to maintain the same level of care as the number of wounded warriors in transition units rises.
• ubiwar - The new issue of Strategic Insights from the Center for Contemporary Conflict contains an article by Kathleen Meilahn: The Strategic Landscape: Avoiding Future Generations of Violent Extremists:

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 8 July 2008.

United States & the Americas

• CTB - FISA Surprise: Bill Amendment Could Mean No Telecom Immunity for Months
• Washington Post - In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an unexpected background, FBI and military officials said. They have criminal arrest records in the United States.
• WaPo Editorial - Barack Obama has taken a small but important step toward adjusting his outdated position on Iraq to the military and strategic realities of the war he may inherit. Sadly, he seems to be finding that the strident and rigid posture he struck during the primary campaign — during which he promised to withdraw all combat forces in 16 months — is inhibiting what looks like a worthy, necessary attempt to create the room for maneuver he will need to capably manage the war if he becomes president.
• CSM - American visits to Canada hit 36-year low; Passport confusion, a weak US dollar, and high gas prices appear to be fueling the steady decline.
• LA Times - Police discovered the tortured and burned bodies of six men in an empty lot Monday morning, ending a period of relative calm in Tijuana, a city beset by drug war violence. Eleven bodies have been discovered since Saturday in violence believed to be drug-related, including the corpse of a woman found in a barrel, state and federal authorities said.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• BBC - The murder of former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko was carried out with the backing of the Russian state, Whitehall sources have told the BBC. A senior security official told Newsnight there were “very strong indications it was a state action”.
• AP - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Tuesday that his meeting with President Bush at a summit of the Group of Eight industrial powers resulted in no progress toward bridging deep disagreements between the former Cold War foes.
• AFP - Georgia’s government condemned a recent series of explosions in its breakaway province of Abkhazia and accused Russia of having organised the acts of violence in the pro-Moscow territory.
• Dawn - Three policemen were shot and killed early on Tuesday in Baksan, a small town in Russia’s North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria, Interfax news agency said quoting local law enforcement officials.
• EurasiaNet - The recent visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Turkmenistan showed that Ashgabat continues to confound the Kremlin on energy matters. Prior to the Medvedev’s trip, Turkmen leader Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov seemingly sent several signals of his readiness to tighten already strong bilateral energy relations. But Medvedev, along with the large trade delegation accompanying him, departed from Turkmenistan without signing any substantive energy deals

Middle East

• CBS - Iraq’s national security adviser said Tuesday his country will not accept any security deal with the United States unless it contains specific dates for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces.
• McClatchy - For the past 11 months Col. David Paschal has back-slapped, noogied and high-fived his soldiers. He’s been kissed on both cheeks by local Iraqis, and he’s upbraided or atta-boyed his counterparts in the Iraqi army and police. He’s sent his gunfighters after the “bad guys.” Paschal, 46, a Chicago native,  is the senior U.S. military officer in Kirkuk.
• Reuters - The Shi’ite Mehdi Army militia is finished as a fighting force in Iraq’s oil rich Basra province and upcoming provincial elections should pass without violence, the province’s governor said on Tuesday.
• KUNA - Iraqi Special Forces arrested three employees of the Iraqi Ministry of Science and Technology on charges of affiliation with Al-Qaeda’s network in the country, the US Army reported Tuesday.
• American Thinker - For years, the media and Democrats have sold the public an understanding that Gerorge W. Bush fabricated a story that Saddam Hussein had a WMD program in order to justify invading Iraq, which invasion then becomes “based on a lie.” About 550 metric tons of yellowcake concentrated uranium were recently shipped out of Iraq.
• France24 - In an interview appearing on the French daily Le Figaro, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he welcomed France’s new conciliatory policies towards his nation, adding that he was ready to negotiate with Israel.
• Jerusalem Post - Syria starts importing wheat, a staple of the country’s export economy; UAE’s rice reserves to deplete in ten days.
• SHRC - The Syrian Human Rights Committee (SHRC) has learnt from numerous sources in the Syrian capital, that detainees in Sednaya Military Prison, west Damascus, are being subjected to a massacre in which dozens have been killed and injured.
• Babylon and Beyond - Hezbollah and its allies are again apparently the big winners in the latest round of struggling over political power in Lebanon. Nothing is official yet, but insiders say Hezbollah’s main Christian ally, the group led by lawmaker Michel Aoun (below right), will likely have a significant share of government posts in the next government.
• ynet - Two people were killed and two were injured in an explosion at a Hamas training camp near the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis, Palestinian sources reported Tuesday morning. The Israel Defense Forces has yet to comment on the incident, which is believed to be the result of a “work accident” during the production of weapons.

Iran

• AFP - Iran would “set fire” to Israel and the US navy in the Gulf as its first response to any American attack over its nuclear programme, an aide to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned on Tuesday.
• Al Arabiya - The Revolutionary Guards embarked on a new round of war games to sharpen their combat readiness amid continued tensions in the Iranian nuclear crisis. The Great Prophet III maneuvers by the missile and naval sections of the Revolutionary Guards are aimed at “improving the combat capability” of the forces, Fars reported.
• Robert Kaplan - Bottom line: precisely because the U. S. dominates the airspace around Iran, it has checkmated itself. Israel will find it very hard to pull America’s chestnuts out of the fire in Iran. An Israeli attack is, in the last analysis, still unlikely. The problem of a nuclear Iran is far from being solved.
• MEMRI - Ahwazi (Iranian Arab) sources report that Iranian authorities declared a state of grave emergency in the Shalamjah region in Khozestan province, on the Iran-Iraq border, and have transferred missile launch platforms to the region bordering on the Shatt Al-Arab estuary.

Southeast Asia

• ABC - Afghan officials have evidence that foreigners were behind a massive suicide bombing against India’s embassy in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai’s spokesman said Tuesday, implying that Pakistan orchestrated the attack.
• MSNBC - A coalition soldier was killed and four others were wounded in a roadside bomb blast in eastern Afghanistan, NATO said on Tuesday. The soldiers were on patrol in the eastern province of Kunar when the blast struck Tuesday.
• Ghosts of Alexander - Agrarian Roots of Pashtun War and Peace Leadership
• CTLab - You know what a qawm is, right? It’s an Afghan solidarity/patronage network and it’s a pretty important aspect of Afghan society. It’s a commonly enough analyzed concept. You can find a qawm bibliography at this end of Afghanistanica’s discussion of qawm. But what I’ll deal with today is Armando Geller and Scott Moss’s computational model for qawm relations.
• AKI - The government in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province and pro-Taliban militants have agreed to keep their agreement intact and carry forward the dialogue process for lasting peace in the Swat valley.
• TheNews - The Taliban here on Monday released two personnel of the Mohmand Rifles while the political administration in return freed a local Taliban activist in the Mohmand Agency.
• AP - Pakistan’s new coalition government came to power after February’s elections on a wave of public sympathy and hope. But some 100 days after formally taking charge, the coalition is in disarray.
• MESH - The online journal Heartland: Eurasian Review of Geopolitics devotes its latest issue to “The Pakistani Boomerang.” and provides this map of the situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, as prepared by Limes, an Italian review of geopolitics. The map shows the tribal areas, sites of clashes between Pakistani forces and jihadists, and cross-border infiltration routes of the Taliban and other jihadists.
• NY Times - A day after India’s prime minister left for the Group of 8 summit meeting in Japan with his government intact and enough political strength to seal a landmark nuclear deal with the United States, his Communist backers announced Tuesday that they would withdraw their support of his government, ending months of political strain and allowing the government to advance its negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency.
• IHT - Sri Lankan fighter planes bombed a Tamil Tiger base Tuesday and the rebels ambushed an army patrol killing two soldiers in the country’s war-ravaged north, the military said. The attacks came a day after ground battles along the front lines of the civil war killed 19 rebels and two soldiers, according to the military.
• TamilNet - Ratnasiri Wickremanayake, the Sri Lankan prime minister Tuesday opening the debate in the parliament on the motion seeking approval to extend the State of Emergency for another month revealed that one hundred and twelve Sri Lankan armed forces personnel were killed and seven hundred and ninety three were injured in the battlefield against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in June.

Far East & Pacific

• NY Sun - Prime Minister Brown and fellow world leaders provoked an outcry after they had a six-course lunch followed by an eight-course dinner at the G-8 summit in Japan where the global food crisis tops the agenda.
• Washington Post - After a nine-month stall, China announced Tuesday that formal negotiations will resume this week on dismantling North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, including ways to verify its recent accounting of plutonium-based nuclear material.
• BBC - The corruption trial of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has begun in Bangkok, almost two years after he was overthrown in a coup.
• Taipei Times - Police disarmed four homemade bombs in the southern Philippines over the weekend and blamed Muslim militants for plotting attacks, officials said.
• IISS - Why War in Asia Remains Thinkable - Prof Hugh White

Europe

• BBC - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has signed a deal to base part of Washington’s controversial missile defence system in the Czech Republic.
• news.com.au - The US formally apologised to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for distributing to reporters an “insulting” biography of him that said he was “hated by many”.

Africa

• Garowe - Unidentified gunmen shot and killed a United Nations official in Somalia on Sunday, moments after he walked out of a mosque in Mogadishu, witnesses said.
• Dawn - Militants shelled the Somali town of Baidoa overnight, killing two government soldiers and wounding seven others, officials and residents said Tuesday. The attack was claimed by the Shebab movement and targeted the presidential palace in Baidoa, 250 kilometres northwest of Mogadishu and home to the country’s transitional parliament.
• Newsweek - The U.N. last year agreed to send 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur. It was to be the largest, most expensive mission the U.N. had ever undertaken, replacing an ineffectual African Union force that had failed to halt the violence. The threadbare force has failed to keep a lid on the violence.
• AllAfrica - LRA leader Joseph Kony has expressed renewed interest in signing the final peace agreement, government sources have said.
• BBC - An international cartel of oil smugglers steals billions of dollars in “blood oil” from Nigeria, trading it for guns, the president has said.
• The Strategist - A ragtag bunch of mercenaries, a failed coup attempt, a sham trial in a African dictatorship…it was never going to end well for Simon Mann. In 2004 the British mercenary tried to replace President Obiang, the tyrant of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, with a puppet who would comply with Western corporate interests. Now, Mann has been sentenced to 34 years jail in Malabo’s notorious Black Beach prison.
• Edward N. Luttwak and Marian L. Tupy - The aid Africa can’t afford; If the G-8 really wants to help, it should cut off funds for dysfunctional states.

The Global War

• CNN - According to a credible collection of opinion from an array of security analysts and authors, Bin Laden’s core appeal may finally be unravelling.
• US News - The ability of the United States to supply food aid to foreign countries is being sharply affected by rising food and oil prices, new numbers show. In the past three to four months, as fuel prices have soared, the cost of shipping food aid across the ocean has climbed by about $30 per ton, and about $50 per ton since 2007—a total of nearly 30 percent, says an official from the United States Agency for International Development, which administers government food assistance.
• Xinhua - In a policy shift, America’s Pentagon wants cluster bombs that are safer. A three-page memo signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, would require that after 2018, more than 99 percent of the bomblets in a cluster bomb must detonate.
• National Post - The world’s most dangerous jihadists no longer answer to al-Qaeda. The terrorists we should fear most are self-recruited wannabes who find purpose in terror and comrades on the Web. This new generation is even more frightening and unpredictable than its predecessors, but its evolution just may reveal the key to its demise.
• Nosint - At the height of the Royal Navy’s dominance of the world’s oceans in the late 1800s, Britain had more warships than the next seven navies combined. As of June 25 this year, there were just six destroyers, 14 frigates and six attack submarines available for tasking, with 10 other combatants in refit or at “reduced readiness”, the Whitehall euphemism for being laid up because of fuel costs, lack of spares or crew shortages.
• Frank Gaffney - If we go along with our enemies’ demands to criminalize Islamophobia, we will mutate Western laws, traditions, values and societies beyond recognition. Ultimately, today’s totalitarian ideologues will triumph where their predecessors were defeated.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

Sorry for the silence around here, but am dealing with craziness in the day job, and it’s sucking all my bandwidth, not to mention my will to live…

Too much insanity in the day job to blog today, and in addition, the family and I will be taking a little trip over the holiday weekend. So, no blogging till probably Tuesday. Summer is here, enjoy the weekend.

A brief world news roundup for 21 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

• NY Times - Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the longtime Massachusetts Democrat and patriarch of the Kennedy family, has a malignant brain tumor, his doctors said on Tuesday.
• The Herald - A Scottish student has died on an exchange trip to America after being run over by a bus while she was jogging. Lisa Moran, 20, from Paisley, was running at the Chapel Hill campus in North Carolina when the accident happened.
• CSM - The surrender this week of a leading commander of Colombia’s leftist rebels is the latest in a string of devastating blows to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that has been fighting to take power for more than 40 years. That desertion, along with recent killings and captures of other top leaders – as well as the revelation of the inside workings of the rebels through seized computer files – show a weakened and fractured force, but analysts say it would be a mistake for the conservative US-backed government of President Álvaro Uribe to claim victory.
• NPR - The Canadian soft-wood lumber industry is in freefall. Sawmills are closing or switching to partial schedules, and unions are screaming for government aid to the affected communities. The reason? The American housing bust. But Canadian timber workers are angry at the U.S. for other reasons, too.
• Telegraph - Britons are among hundreds of terminally ill people flocking to Mexico to buy a cheap, widely available euthanasia drug which is illegal in most countries.
• Thaindian - At least 21 people have been killed and more than 20 injured when a bus plummeted 200 meters off a mountain highway in the Mexican state of Hidalgo, the police have said.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• Washington Post - Georgia’s ruling party is likely to win a majority in a parliamentary election on Wednesday that the West says will be a test of President Mikheil Saakashvili’s democratic credentials as he pushes for NATO membership.
• BBC - Russian security services search the Moscow HQ of oil giant BP, the second time the firm has been targeted.
• Joshua Kucera - Travels in the Former Soviet Union; The Cult of Heydar Aliyev.
• RussiaToday - Eighteen tourists, including eleven children, have been injured in a bus crash in Ukraine. Most of the injured are believed to be Russian.
• Guardian - Thousands of English fans arrived in Moscow ahead of today’s Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester United at the Luzhniki stadium. Around 6,000 Russian police will be on duty today to prevent disturbances amid fears that the all-English final could lead to violence. Some 700 buses will take fans arriving today directly to the stadium, using special lanes to circumvent the city’s dismal traffic problem.
• EurasiaNet - Encouraged by improving ties to the West, Uzbekistan seems to want to wriggle out from Russia’s warm embrace – again. In recent weeks, Tashkent has made a series of gestures that signal a cooling in its relations with Moscow.
• Kommersant - Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedow began his first visit to Baku yesterday and held talks with Azeri President Ilham Aliev. The main topic of their discussion was the construction of the Transcaspian natural gas pipeline bypassing Russia.
• RIA Novosti - Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil company GNKAR said on Tuesday it had completed building an oil pipeline along the bottom of the Caspian Sea for a major Russian crude producer.

Middle East

• ABC - Thousands of Iraqi troops moved unchallenged into Baghdad’s Sadr City Tuesday to seize the Shiite militia stronghold, in the largest attempt yet by the government to impose control, an Iraqi military spokesman said.
• Jerusalem Post - Fearing that Damascus is acquiring advanced military platforms, Israel is closely following meetings being held in Moscow this week between a high-level Syrian military delegation and Russian Defense Ministry officials.
• FT - Arab mediators on Tuesday gave Lebanon’s Hizbollah-led opposition until Wednesday to sign up to proposals to defuse a crisis that drove the country close to civil war. After four days of tense negotiations in Doha, led by Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, Qatari prime minister, the pro-western governing coalition said it had accepted a proposed Arab League deal to end an 18-month political standoff and pave the way for the election of Michel Suleiman, Lebanon’s army chief, as president.
• MEMRI - From MEMRI TV: Hamas Minister of Culture Atallah Abu Al-Subh: Bush Is a Dracula-Style Vampire. The Blood of Afghan Children Drips from His Fangs onto His Lips and Chest.

Iran

• Times Online - Iran’s nuclear programme could be triggering a race to develop atomic weapons in the Middle East, a study warned today. The report noted a recent surge of nuclear activity in countries in the region.
• Payvand - The UN nuclear watchdog chief Mohamed ElBaradei has once again highlighted the lack of evidence to prove Iran is after a nuclear bomb. “We haven’t seen indications or any concrete evidence that Iran is building a nuclear weapon and I’ve been saying that consistently for the last five years,” ElBaradei asserted.
• AP - The top uniformed U.S. military officer told Congress on Tuesday that Iran is directly jeopardizing any potential for peace in Iraq, prompting fresh calls from senators that the U.S. pursue diplomatic talks with Tehran. Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “irresponsible actions” by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard “directly jeopardize” peace in Iraq.
• MEMRI - Expediency Council Chairman Hashemi Rafsanjani, considered the No. 2 man in the Iranian regime hierarchy, has criticized the opposition of the government of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the privatization process that was decided upon.

Southeast Asia

• The Economist - Afghanistan’s troubles are, of course, unique, especially in the viciousness and extent of its continuing insurgency, most often compared with Iraq’s. But this is in fact only one of four foreign interventions in conflict-ridden states in Asia in recent years. The others—in Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Nepal—offer revealing parallels with Afghanistan.
• UPI - Australian troops began an offensive Monday, pushing south into the Taliban stronghold of Afghanistan’s Uruzgan province.
• Reuters - On the western edge of Kabul, in the saddle between two hills, stands a flaking monument to what the city once aspired to be, a cosmopolitan destination drawing chic travelers from the world over.
• Dawn - Attacks around Afghanistan killed 17 people while police stopped a suicide bomber from driving a stolen police jeep packed with explosives into a base in Delaram district, officials said Tuesday.
• Al Arabiya - There is anecdotal evidence, supported by doctors concerned about the potential for the spread of HIV and AIDS, that more and more young women across northern regions of Afghanistan are turning to sex work to escape grinding poverty.
• AP - Thieves, feuding tribesmen and Taliban militants are creating chaos along the main Pakistan-Afghanistan highway, threatening a vital supply line for U.S. and NATO forces.
• AKI - Twenty Taliban prisoners are expected to be freed from Pakistan’s jails by Thursday in an exchange under which Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was released at the weekend.
• Daily Star - Ten people were wounded when a roadside bomb exploded near a military vehicle in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, the third blast to hit the country in three days after an US missile strike on a senior militant, police said. The incident occurred in the northwestern garrison town of Kohat
• CBS - Amid cries of ‘Allah o Akbar’ (god is great), a young boy, barely 12 years old, lifts his machete and strikes at his victim who is lying on the ground, all tied up for the kill. Waving a ‘V’ for victory sign with his right hand, the boy picks up the severed head and shows it around to the chants of applause from an audience gathered in a remote part of the region straddling the mountainous range which divides Pakistan and Afghanistan.
• Hindu - Bangalore: The death toll in the hooch tragedy in several districts of Karnataka went up to 110 on Tuesday with another 55 people succumbing after consuming the illicit liquor, over the last 24 hours.
• Xinhua - Eleven people were killed and 41 others injured in a collision between two buses in Bangladesh’s northwestern Bogra district, about 170 km northwest of capital Dhaka, early Tuesday.
• TamilNet - Brigadier Balraj, a senior and a special commander of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam (LTTE), passed away Tuesday at 2:00 p.m. of a sudden heart attack in Vanni, LTTE’s Head Quarters said

Far East & Pacific

• Washington Post - The tales of survival came after the confirmed death toll from the disaster rose to 40,075, according to the State Council, China’s Cabinet. Officials have said the final number killed by the quake was expected to surpass 50,000. Five million people lost their homes in the quake, said Jiang Li, vice minister of civil affairs.
• AFP - Twenty-five pilgrims have been killed in a bus crash in Nepal and around 20 more are missing presumed dead, police said Tuesday.

Europe

• DW - Stabilizing food prices across Europe needs to be a top priority, Europe’s agriculture ministers agree. The hard part will be deciding how to best reform the system.
• AKI - Members of the Islamic community in the southern Italian city of Naples and surrounding areas will protest on Wednesday against the government’s proposed new security measures.
• BBC - As Iceland’s whale hunt begins, its foreign minister warns of damage to the country’s long term interests.
• France24 - The suspected top political leader of the Basque separatist group ETA was arrested Tuesday in southwestern France in a joint operation by French and Spanish police, Spanish anti-terrorism sources said.
• Times Online - A young woman crushed to death when a bus hit a tree in near Tower Bridge in South London this morning has been named as Emily Diamond.

Africa

• AFP - A wave of violence against foreigners in South Africa has forced 13,000 people to flee their homes, the UN said Tuesday, as President Thabo Mbeki pleaded for an end to a “shameful” show of xenophobia.
• CISA - A Catholic church was attacked and looted by government supporters during fierce fighting between the army and soldiers of the former liberation movement, SPLA, in the disputed oil-rich town of Abiyei.
• HRW - International action is needed to end the Lord’s Resistance Army’s reported new spree of abductions and sexual violence and to help execute arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court for the group’s leaders, Human Rights Watch said. HRW has learned that since February 2008 the insurgent Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) group has carried out at least 100 abductions, and perhaps many more, in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Southern Sudan. Boys are made to act as porters or subjected to military training and girls are being used as sex slaves, according to credible information.
• BBC - Three people have been killed and nine wounded in a blast on a minibus in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, state radio reports.
• Reuters - Global price rises and floods last year have caused severe food shortages in northeast Uganda, where nearly 30 people have died and some have been reduced to eating rats, officials said on Tuesday.
• Daily Times - Three Malawians and four Mozambicans died on the spot last Thursday evening near Mazoe Bridge in Mozambique, after a Linking Africa (Ingwe) bus was involved in an accident.
• ISN - The assassination of a Somali al-Qaida affiliate overshadows peace talks, with Kenya vulnerable to terrorist attacks in response.

The Global War

• Javno - A Saudi citizen who allegedly intended to be the “20th hijacker” on Sept. 11 tried to kill himself last month at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba after learning he faced charges that could carry the death penalty, his lawyer said on Monday.
• US News - Pakistan’s ungoverned tribal region has been both a Taliban haven and a constant headache for nato partners throughout the war here. But their frustration with the area is growing, as cross-border attacks coming from the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas of Pakistan, commonly known here as the fata, doubled from 20 in March 2007 to 41 in March 2008 in eastern Afghanistan alone.
• Press TV - Venezuela has declared that it is establishing a common bank with Iran to finance economic development projects in the two countries.
• MESH - MESH invites selected authors to offer original first-person statements on their new books—why and how they wrote them, and what impact they hope and expect to achieve. Matthew Levitt is senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a member of MESH. His forthcoming book is Negotiating Under Fire: Preserving Peace Talks in the Face of Terror Attacks.

Sights & Sounds

Read more of Cables, dispatches and memoranda »

A brief world news roundup for 20 May 2008.

United States & the Americas

• CBS - Cuba accused America’s top diplomat in Havana of carrying mail to dissidents that contained private funds from an organization run by the benefactor of an alleged terrorist.
• contentions - As noted here, Barack Obama seemed to discount any real concern about Iran in remarks in Oregon last night. Today, at the beginning of an economic speech, John McCain responded to Obama’s conclusion that compared to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, the threat now posed by Iran is “tiny:”
• AP - Venezuela wants the U.S. ambassador to explain a violation of its airspace by a U.S. Navy plane, the country’s foreign minister said Monday.
• CNN - The commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia’s Force 47 has told reporters in Bogota, a day after surrendering, that “the solution is not through war. There must be dialogue.”
• McClatchy -Brazilians turned to cheaper sugar cane-based ethanol to fuel their vehicles. Now, fuels made from sugar cane have become Brazil’s second most-used energy source, only behind fossil fuels. Exploding demand has pushed mills here to plant on more farmland, harvest the crop more quickly and grow better-quality cane.

Russia, Caucasus & Central Asia

• EurasiaNet - The Upper Kodori Gorge, the only part of breakaway Abkhazia still governed by Georgia, has emerged in recent weeks as a flashpoint in relations between Tbilisi and Moscow. To Abkhaz separatists, it is the launch pad for a potential attack. To Georgians, it is a symbol of their intentions to regain Abkhazia without conflict.
• Kommersant - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a resolution creating a government presidium – a special body within the cabinet. It will be made up of over half the cabinet members.
• DiD - Numerous sources are now reporting that a high-level Russian delegation in Algeria has closed $7.5 billion worth of arms contracts. The Algerian package would be post-Soviet Russia’s largest ever single arms deal, and compares to annual Russian weapons exports to all customers of $5-6 billion per year over the last couple of years.
• FSI - On May 5 a panel of Russia experts including CDDRL Director Michael McFaul presented analysis of the current state of Russia’s political and economic development and the likelihood of continuity or change in Dmitry Medvedev’s first term as president of Russia.
• Joshua Kucera - I have another series on Slate.com this week, this one dealing with the Caucasus and Central Asia. The first one is up; it’s on South Ossetia. Then there will be a new one every day for the rest of the week. The next three are on Azerbaijan, on nationalism and the cult of personality, Islam and the police state, and then final one will be on Uzbekistan’s beleaguered dissident community.

Middle East

• AINA - Iraqi officials said police on Monday arrested a man suspected of being a top al-Qaida in Iraq figure in the northern city of Mosul, where security forces have been carrying out an intensified crackdown to root out the terror network.
• BBC - Eleven Iraqi police recruits are shot dead near Mosul as US and Iraqi forces try to crack down on al-Qaeda.
• Reuters - A local Iraqi police chief was killed on Monday when a bomb placed under his bed in the local police headquarters exploded as he slept, police said.
• AFPS - Iraqi and coalition forces killed 11 militants, detained 24 others and seized weapons in Iraq over the past three days, military officials said.
• Stars and Stripes - It was once the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, based in Schweinfurt. It spent, all told, 27 months in Iraq, 15 of them in a second, grueling deployment as part of the “surge.” Now, with a new name, the unit is heading back to Iraq this fall, officials announced Monday.
• Press TV - Iraq has officially increased the size of its oil reserves and they could exceed Saudi Arabia’s to become the largest in the world.
• CTC Sentinel - Iraq’s Ho Chi Minh Trail: The Syrian-Iraqi Border Since 2003.
• Reuters - A Yemeni court has sent back to jail an al Qaeda suspect on the U.S. list of most wanted militants after his release earlier this year prompted U.S. complaints.
• Daily Star - Over-consumption, over-pumping and mismanagement are causing Lebanon’s fresh water wells to become contaminated with salt water, making the reserves unfit for human consumption, a recent study shows. The information was made public at a conference organized the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy & International Affairs.
• AP - Talks between rival Lebanese factions teetered near collapse Monday, as Arab League mediators in Qatar pressed the parties to resolve the political strife that erupted into bloody violence and pushed the country to the brink of a new civil war.

Iran

• BBC - Members of the Bahai faith say their entire leadership in Iran have been arrested by the authorities.
• Payvand - Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Chairman Alaeddin Borujerdi on Sunday called on Germany to expel terrorist organizations that are using the country as a base.
• Payvand - The import of Pakistani rice started through the southern Pakistani border on Sunday, the Sistan-Baluchestan governor general said. According to him, over 1,000 tons of rice were imported to Iran via Pishin border market in Sarbaz city yesterday.
• MEMRI - Iran has been attempting to persuade Syria to cancel the flour-for-rice deal it has concluded between it and Egypt, which is suffering from a severe bread shortage. The pressure comes in response to Egypt’s refusal to normalize relations with Iran.

Southeast Asia

• CNN - Australian soldiers have started “a major push” against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, the Australian government said Monday.
• Today Online - Insurgents are crossing from Pakistan into Afghanistan, where attacks have spiked in recent weeks, hidden among hundreds of families that make the trip daily, the NATO force here said Monday.
• Spiegel - German special forces had an important Taliban commander in their sights in Afghanistan. But he escaped, because the Germans were not authorized to use lethal force. The German government’s hands-tied approach to the war is causing friction with its NATO allies.
• Telegraph - A US Marine narrowly avoids death in this dramatic series of photos taken on the frontline of the battle against the Taliban.
• UK MoD - British forces were conducting operations in the Musa Qaleh area when a soldier patrolling on foot was caught in an explosion and tragically lost his life.
• Asia Times - The Pakistani Taliban will be pleased to have secured the release of 55 militants, including top Taliban commanders, not to mention a US$287,000 payment. In return, the government will welcome back its envoy to Afghanistan and dozens of security officials held captive by the militants. The real winners, though, are the militants, who orchestrated the prisoner exchange and who aim to step up the pressure on Islamabad.
• The News - Three people were killed and two injured in a remote-controlled bomb blast outside a mosque at village Dagar in Tehsil Momand of the Bajuar.
• AKI - The Pakistani Taliban on Monday claimed responsibility for Sunday’s suicide attack in the north-western Pakistan town of Mardan which killed at least 13 people and injured 20 others.
• AKI - The leader of Bangladesh’s largest Islamic party has been arrested over allegations of graft under the military-backed government’s drive to fight corruption.
• UPI - Police in India’s Rajasthan state have launched a massive drive to identify Bangladesh nationals following Tuesday’s series of deadly bomb blasts in Jaipur.
• AFP - An Indian army soldier died Monday in shooting across the line dividing the Himalayan region of Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the army said.
• MEMRI - At least eight militants have been killed during a 12-hour gun-battle in Indian-administered Kashmir. According to a report in the Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, two district-level commanders of militant groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad were among those killed.
• Nosint - India has planned to progressively deploy its advanced Sukhoi-30MKI fighter aircraft along its western border with Pakistan, the Times of India reported on Sunday.
• Javno - Sri Lanka military attacked rebel positions in the island’s far north on Sunday, amidst daily land, air and sea raids, killing 61 Tamil Tiger rebels, the military said on Monday. The fresh attacks also saw 15 soldiers killed.
• AP - Southeast Asia’s most wanted terror suspect, Noordin Top, may have evaded a massive manhunt and fled Indonesia, according to police documents obtained by The Associated Press.

Far East & Pacific

• AFP - Ma Ying-jeou took the oath of office Tuesday as Taiwan’s new president, two months after sweeping to victory on a pledge to repair relations with rival China.