A suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up and injured 13 Algerian troops in an attack on an army convoy in Lakhdaria July 23. On June 8 a French engineer and his Algerian driver were killed in a bomb attack in the same area that was claimed by the North African wing of al-Qaeda network. (AFP, July 24) At the village of Beni Djemaa, Blida wilaya, jihadist insurgents ransacked a farmhouse and beheaded its 66-year-old owner, after demanding money the family had received under an agricultural aid program. (Magharebia, July 23)

Misha Glenny writes for the New Statesman, July 24:

Looking a little like God in a Cecil B DeMille film, Radovan Karadzic was genuinely unrecognisable when he was arrested on a Belgrade bus last Monday evening. Yet even more astonishing was the news that he had been working as a crystal-rubbing therapist promoting well-being to audiences around Serbia. The killer as New Age healer - you couldn't make it up.

In the third incident this month at a French nuclear plant, 100 employees were "slightly contaminated" July 23 at the Tricastin plant in the southern Vaucluse region, according to the EDF power company. EDF insisted the exposure was well below legal limits and the incident rated at "level zero" on the seven-point nuclear accident scale. But the Commission de Recherche et d'Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité (CRIIAD) said the legal annual limit for exposure to radioactivity was not "a level at which risk begins but a level of maximum permitted risk." Annie Thebaud-Mony, a researcher at France's INSERM medical research institute, said that "emphasising that the accident is minor...is a way of downplaying the fact that the employees are exposed to radioacitivity."

From the Uyghur American Association, July 21:

Bus Blasts Kill Two in Southwestern China
BEIJING — Two public buses exploded during the Monday morning rush hour in the city of Kunming, killing at least two people and injuring 14 others in what the authorities described as deliberate attacks as China is tightening security nationwide and warning of possible terrorist threats in advance of next month's Olympic Games.

The 4th Circuit US Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA, issued a 5-4 ruling July 15 finding that if the government's allegations against Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri are true, the president is empowered by Congress to hold al-Marri in a military prison without charge as an enemy combatant, under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). The ruling overturned the 4th Circuit's prior decision holding that the military cannot seize and imprison as "enemy combatants" civilians lawfully residing in the US. (Jurist, July 16)

On July 16, ICE agents arrested 18 immigrant workers at Colorado Precast Concrete Inc. in Loveland, Colo., after executing an administrative search warrant at the plant. The workers were arrested on administrative immigration charges. One is from El Salvador; the others are from Mexico. All were taken to Park County Jail to await removal or a hearing before a federal immigration judge. The Larimer County Sheriff's Office assisted with the operation; the Air Branch of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) provided air support.

On July 15 at 5 PM, 50 agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and 12 detectives from the Rhode Island state police simultaneously raided all six of the state's courthouses, arresting 31 immigrants employed as maintenance workers by two contractors hired by the state. Those arrested were 16 women and 15 men, immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil and Mexico. (Providence Journal, July 17)

From Human Rights Watch, July 21, via Congo Planet:

Congo Peace Accord Fails to End Killing of Civilians
Brussels — The killing and rape of civilians in the eastern province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues at a horrifying rate despite the signing of a peace accord six months ago, Human Rights Watch said today. The agreement was supposed to stop such attacks.