From DPA, Feb. 26:

A bomb blast Sunday at a Shiite shrine in the southern city of Basra injured four people, a security source said.

The incident at a shrine to Imam Ali in central Basra, 550 kilometres south of Baghdad, occurred before noon, the source said.

Would be rather a Phyrric victory if, four years and counting after Operation Enduring Freedom, the US wound up losing control of both Pakistan and Afghanistan simultaneously. From VOA, Feb. 27:

Hundreds of Afghan forces - backed by tanks and rocket launchers - have surrounded the country's main high security prison after Taleban and al-Qaida prisoners seized control Saturday evening. Authorities restarted negotiations Monday but warned the government could use force end the standoff.

Is Pakistan's Islamist military government going to fall—to even more radical Islamists? Just what the world needs—a nuclear-armed Taliban. Of course the repression will only enflame things. Dictators always seem to learn that lesson too late. From Pakistan's Dawn Feb. 27:

Police sealed all entry points into the city on Sunday in a bid to prevent opposition activists from reaching Lahore to participate in a rally called by the Qaumi Majlis-i-Mushawarat.

Hey, its all just good, clean fun compared to what they do to the civilian population. From Mercopress, Feb. 21:

Colombian Army "basic training" exercises for recruits that involved scorching with a branding iron, beatings, near-drowning and sexual abuses ended Tuesday with the sacking of the commander of the force.

The latest escalation of the secret war in West Papua is even more eclipsed from the news than usual by the current hideous escalation in Iraq. But, as we witnessed in India last month, tribal peoples armed with bows and arrows are confronting state security forces with automatic weapons to defend their lands. You can be sure they are paying closer attention in the board rooms of Freeport McMoRan...

Did anyone catch this one? The headline from Canada's Global National reads "Protecting Canada's Arctic sovereignty." Protecting it from whom? Well, it turns out Washington was peeved by Ottawa's highly symbolic dispatchal of armed icebreakers up to the Northwest Passage, because even token policing of these waters is an expression of at least the theoretical potential for denial of access to US nuclear submarines, which routinely violate Canadian sovereignty there. Canada has troops in Afghanistan (under NATO rubric), but has declined to join Washington's "coalition of the willing" in Iraq. This assertion of national rights over the passage is meant to send a message to the White House that Canada is not a mere political and military appendage of the US – and is, perhaps, now closer to "Old Europe" than to its largest trading partner, the hegemon to the south...

Pretty funny to see George Bush accusing the liberal Democrats of racism and Hillary Clinton playing the xenophobe. Is there really any reason to be wary of the port management contract being turned over to a firm from the United Arab Emirates? Predictably, the most salient point in this Feb. 23 New York Times account—Dubai's role in nuclear proliferation—is buried towards the very end. Note highlighted passage:

From AP, Feb. 23:

"We want the correspondent!" shouted two gunmen who pulled up in a pickup truck, fired into the air and then killed the Al-Arabiya newswoman and two of her colleagues.