Mexican federal army troops have taken control of the border city of Nuevo Laredo, and detained 41 local police for questioning. The crackdown comes after local police opened fire on federal agents sent in to investigate the murder of the newly-appointed police chief. A surge of drug-related violence in the city has claimed 45 lives this year.

Mexican President Vicente Fox launched "the mother of all battles" on the drug trade, sending hundreds of armed police to the border cities in March to restore order. But concerns about lawlessness were reignited last week with the killing of Nuevo Laredo's police chief, Alejandro Dominguez, a day after he took office.

It seems the US and Russia, acting in concert to protect their mutual ally Islam Karimov, exerted pressure at a NATO meeting in Brussels to make sure language calling for an investigation into last month's bloody repression in Uzbekistan would be excized from the meeting's final document. Nice to see Washington and Moscow putting aside their differences, and this certainly indicates that Karimov has been playing his cards very well. Pentagon officials of course invoked the need for continued access to Uzbekistan's military bases. Interesting that the State Department dissented, indicating a possible split in the administration between sleazy pragmatists who see Karimov as "our son of a bitch" and hubristic visionaries who support "regime change" in favor of a less equivocal client who won't have to be shared with the Russians...

More explosions are reported in Iran this morning, this time in the southeastern city of Zahedan, near the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. The three blasts took no lives, but injured two people and caused property damage. Authorities were unclear on a link to the June 12 blasts in Ahvaz and Tehran, noting the presence of drug-smuggling networks in the Zahedan area. (AP, June 14)

Well, at least this makes the NY Times, even if they buried it on page 14. Thanks to TruthOut for forwarding it:

Some Held at Guantánamo Are Minors, Lawyers Say
By Neil A. Lewis
The New York Times

Monday 13 June 2005

Washington - Lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, say that there still may be as many as six prisoners who were captured before their 18th birthday and that the military has sought to conceal the precise number of juveniles at the prison camp.

Bomb blasts struck Iranian government buildings June 12 in Ahvaz, capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province bordering Iraq, followed within hours by two other bombs in central Tehran, killing nine and injuring over 85. The attacks come days before presidential elections. Iran's security service blamed the bombings — the deadliest in Iran in more than a decade — on supporters of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

A suicide bomber crashed his car into a US military patrol just outside Kandahar June 13, killing himself and wounding four US soldiers, one seriously. The US ambassador in Kabul, Zalmay Khalilzad, condemned such attacks as "cowardly acts of desperation, committed by criminals who move in shadows and hide in holes" and vowed to catch those responsible. (IHT, June 14)

David Horowitz' website Discover the Networks: A Guide to the Political Left is pretty funny, evoking what Richard Hofstadter called "the paranoid style in American politics." Its list of un-American "radicals" includes both George Soros and Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (neither "leftists"), as well as Death Row celebrity Mumia Abu-Jamal and pro-death penalty ex-prez Bill Clinton. What isn't so funny is that Discover the Networks apparently exchanged links with a truly evil site called Target of Opportunity. The disingenuous "disclaimer" on this site is actually an explicit incitement to violence:

A top member of a banned Islamist group who predicted the fall of Morocco's monarchy and called for the setting up of a republic will go on trial this month. "I'm accused of attacking the monarchic regime and face three to five years imprisonment," said Nadia Yassine, daughter of Abdeslam Yassine, the spiritual leader of the Justice and Charity group. The group, which rejects violence, is seen as the main opponent to the North African monarchy. It has a strong following in universities and is popular in poor areas.

Nadia told a newspaper last week she expected the monarchy to collapse soon and that "Moroccans can live without King Mohammed." She also said the Moroccan constitution was "worthy of history's bin" and called for the setting up of a republic.