dissemination and defamation

NYT: international law more like guidelines for CIA
"The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees."
NYT: US Army reviewing arms supply contract

WP: the food crisis linked to violence in 14 countries
WP: the politics and legacy of another food crisis, the 1932-33 famine in Soviet Ukraine
"'There is now a wealth of historical material detailing the specific features of Stalin's forced collectivization and terror famine policies against Ukraine,' [President] Yushchenko wrote in the Wall Street Journal late last year. 'Other parts of the Soviet Union suffered terribly as well. But in the minds of the Soviet leadership there was a dual purpose in persecuting and starving the Ukrainian peasantry. It was part of a campaign to crush Ukraine's national identity and its desire for self-determination.'"

LAT: Colombia alleges that the FARC launched mortar rounds from Ecuador
"Colombia's army commander, Gen. Mario Montoya, cited press reports quoting demobilized rebels who said that the FARC maintained 60 to 80 camps on the Ecuadorean side of the border. Ecuador said it was waiting to receive the protest note to formally respond. But Undersecretary of Defense Miguel Carvajal said in a telephone interview Saturday night that the claim was part of a 'defamation campaign' to divert attention from Colombia's internal problems."
LAT: Richardson holds meeting with Chávez to try to restart negotiations for release of 3 Americans held by the FARC since 2003
Adam Isacson: report on state of civil society, and military, paramilitary, and guerrilla presence in Guaviare, Colombia - part I; part II

LAT: homicides in Recife receive little attention
"Although Rio de Janeiro's bloody drug war makes international headlines, the homicide rate in this balmy city of 1.5 million is 90.9 per 100,000, more than twice that of Rio, according to the Latin American Technological Network's Map of Violence."

LAT: shootout in Tijuana between drug gangs leaves at least 13 dead
"The shootout is just the latest in a spasm of drug-related violence that has gripped the border town this year. In the first four months of 2008, Tijuana has seen dozens of kidnappings, assaults and homicides, including children gunned down in the mayhem...The motive for Saturday's bloodshed was unclear. Police said it could have been a falling-out between factions of the Arellano Felix narcotics cartel, which has long controlled the drug trade in the city. Or it could be another cartel trying to move in on its turf.
Some speculate that the killings may have been revenge by traffickers against suspected informants.
Still, experts said the recent surge in violence undoubtedly is linked to a major offensive by authorities against organized-crime drug traffickers, an operation that has strained delicate alliances between traffickers who had previously cooperated with one another in the lucrative narcotics trade."

NYT: a Times reporter's week in a Harare jail for "committing journalism"

LAT: the challenges of establishing a UN-AU peace keeping force in Darfur
"The mission, with an estimated annual budget of $2.5 billion, has arrived as the Darfur conflict has grown more complicated. Though frequently described as a genocide that pits an Arab-dominated government and its allied militias against non-Arab rebels and villagers, the conflict today defies easy labels. Arabs are killing Arabs. Africans are killing Africans. Some former rebels have joined the government and some Arab militias, known as janjaweed, now fight against it.
At the same time, general lawlessness and proliferation of arms have fueled widespread banditry, carjacking and rape. Most recently, Chad and Sudan have contributed to the violence through a proxy war in the Darfur region, where they are arming and funding insurgencies to attack one another.
For the moment, the mission's most pressing challenge is getting boots on the ground. Fewer than 300 additional U.N. troops, from nations such as Bangladesh and China, have arrived in Darfur. The rest of the nearly 9,000 peacekeepers here are African Union holdovers who just replaced their green AU berets with blue U.N. helmets."

BBC: report from Chechnya
"I did not feel that the north Caucasus was about to explode again. People are exhausted and the rebels are now thought to number only a few hundred.
But the missing and the dead have relatives and Chechnya has a long tradition of blood feuds.
There are countless unemployed young men.
Moscow must persuade them and their younger brothers that they have a future. If not, joining the militants may appeal more than joining the police."

WP: judges still not reinstated in Pakistan

NYT: Karzai survives assassination attempt at Sunday parade
Gdn: after recently strongly criticizing US and NATO tactics

Obs: Iraqi girl killed by her father, allegedly for falling in love with a British soldier in Basra

Obs: Hezbollah build up in Lebanon
"But what is becoming more obvious, even as Hizbollah tries to hide it, is that the group has embarked on an unprecedented build-up of men, equipment and bunker-building in preparation for the war that almost everyone - Lebanese and Israeli - considers inevitable. 'The villages in the south are empty of men,' said one international official. 'They are all gone, training in Bekaa, Syria and Iran.' A trip by The Observer through villages in the Hizbollah heartland confirmed a conspicuous lack of fighting-age men."

BBC: Algeria military raids Al-Qaeda hideouts, kills 10

BBC: LTTE launches air attacks in northeastern Sri Lanka