arrrrgh

NYT: changing warfare in Pakistan, but US urges Musharraf not to enact emergency powers.

AP: leader of Tamil Tigers political wing killed in airstrike

LAT: Israeli police storm a Druze village (to find alleged vandals of a cellphone tower); villagers resist and 40 end up injured.

Gdn: Burmese army, facing "manpower crisis," replaces deserters with children, according to a Human Rights Watch report. "Military recruiters target underage recruits at bus and train stations, threatening arrest if they refuse to join. Some children are beaten into making them "volunteer". The number of child soldiers is estimated to run to thousands...Burma's 30-odd armed groups - rebels and those allied to the regime - also use children in their ranks, though some of the underage recruits volunteer because their families cannot afford to support them."

Econ: more on the Madrid bombing trials
Slate: making sense of those 40,000-year sentences

LAT: student protest of 69 proposed constitutional amendments in Venezuela turns violent; protesters reject Chavez's latest move to consolidate power and run for re-election indefinitely.

Econ: round-up of the Darfur peace talks
Econ: the US military re-organizes to create Africom; previously, 'jurisdiction' over Africa was shared by 3 Unified Combatant Commands (Cocoms). "This has changed in the current strategic environment, with the US more concerned at the risk of terrorism incubating in failed or failing states."

Ind: intrigue in Kazakhstan

Ind: a colony that won't let go

Slate: the admin PR rep who did

LAT: new book on India's Research and Analysis Wing (i.e., spy agency) met with gov't alarm. apparently no alarm expressed over the agency's acronym.

Adam Isacson: Plan Colombia vs Plan Mexico, a comprehensive comparison.

SWJ: Nagl's take on the continuing debate on anthropologists' and social scientists' role in counter-insurgency: "General Sir William Francis Butler noted a century ago that 'The nation that draws a clear line of demarcation between its thinking men and its fighting men will soon have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.' "

NYT magazine: blurring the line between "thinking men" and "fighting men": of poetry and war at West Point

AP: pirates off the coast of Somalia were overpowered by the crew of a ship they attacked. "Somali pirates are trained fighters, in some cases linked to powerful Somali clans, outfitted with sophisticated arms and equipment, including GPS satellite instruments. They have seized merchant ships, ships carrying aid, and once even a cruise ship."

Slate: drive carefully next week