mao the fashionista

LAT: tens of political candidates for local-level offices have been killed in Colombia, where elections will be held Oct 28.

Miami Herald: rights groups allege increase in extra-judicial killings by Colombian gov't forces over 2002-2007 (compared to 1997-2002), lobby US Democrats to cut off military aid and block the bilateral free trade agreement up for renewal.

AP: sadly as if on cue from last week's story about the Brazilian film “Tropa de Elite,” 12 die in favela police raid

Slate: check out report on a privately run juvenile detention center in Texas. dear lord. frightening realization: even Texas cancels deals with abusive contractors.

LAT: Italy manages immigration by manhandling; but how is the issue being framed?

LAT: Burmese generals map road to "democracy" (apparently includes paving over activists, monks, anyone along the way)

LAT: strangest metaphor of the edition -- apparently "Mr Toad's Wild Ride" aptly describes Polish politics at the moment. too bad that has to be meaningless to a sizable chunk of the readership.

AP: Congo militia leader taken into custody at the Hague, to stand trial for war crimes in Ituri.

BBC: meanwhile, in the Kivu region of Congo, rebel leader denies that 1,000 of his troops defected.

AP: dust-up at bolivia's busiest airport between federal troops and locals. the national gov't was trying to enforce collection of landing fees, and local officials protested that Santa Cruz, the province, should retain the fees. after locals took back the airport, Morales and the national gov't backed down.

WP: Bush announces new sanctions against Burma -- now 25 leaders of the junta face "freezing any accounts they may have in U.S. banks or other institutions under U.S. jurisdictions. While it seems unlikely those generals have much money in the United States, administration officials hope to use the restrictions to force foreign financial institutions to follow suit. The administration also imposed a U.S. visa ban on 260 Burmese officials and family members."

WP: local-level deal reached between Sunnis and Shiites in Baghdad; leaders of some factions agreed to the "'cessation of firing on main streets, markets, and parks,' demands that both Sunnis and Shiites refrain from stealing property from displaced families, and says that authorities will release all innocent people held in American and Iraqi prisons."

LAT: security chief announces crackdown against transgressions of the Islamic moral code in Iran - more fallout from Ahmadinejad's Columbia Univ speech?
(SNL had its own take)

AP: dirty war trial begins in Argentina.

LAT: manila mall bombed

WP: the aftermath of war for American vets

Slate: and then there are the laws that the US gov't does enforce (or at least does nowadays...grandpa never paid a fine for his moonshine.)

Ind: Mao, a man with ageless style (who knew that there was a Chinese edition of Vogue?)