a terrible thing to say

LAT: Sunni militants launch coordinated attacks in Iraq, while fighting in Sadr City continues
WP: Iraqi Christians targeted
"[A reverend in Baghdad] said every Christian business executive he knows has been threatened, kidnapped or attacked. 'The Christian is weak. He has no tribe,' he said."
BBC: doubts over Iraqi security forces' capacity, willingness to fight
"There were also many desertions from the Iraqi security forces. About 1,000 personnel - including a full infantry battalion - refused to fight or joined the militias during last month's offensive.
More than 900 police and soldiers have been sacked in Basra, including nearly 40 senior police officers, where the fiercest clashes took place. A further 400 police officers were dismissed in Kut."

LAT: Afghan insurgents targeting cell phone towers, angering civilians
"For the last two months, Taliban fighters have been blowing up telecommunications towers, with the aim of preventing NATO-led forces from hunting them down via cellphone signals. It could hardly have been a worse public-relations move for the insurgency."

BBC: history of a village destroyed (nearly 60 years ago) in Israel

WP: Uribe's cousin and confidante arrested on charges of collusion with paramilitaries
Also, "With the legitimacy of Congress at rock bottom, lawmakers have been locked in a series of heated debates over how to reform the 268-member body and punish those parties whose members have been linked to paramilitary groups." [32 members have been arrested, 30 others are being investigated, and dozens more implicated, with investigations to begin soon.]

Ind: Cuban authorities break up 'Women in White' protest, calling for release of their imprisoned husbands

NYT: Zimbabwe state newspaper calls for unity gov't
BBC: which may change, now that Mugabe's party is announced winner of first recount
Econ: while repression, violence continue
"Human Rights Watch, an international group, says that ZANU-PF, the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe, has set up torture camps across the country as part of a systematic campaign to intimidate the opposition, which won the parliamentary elections and, it claims, the presidential vote too. Victims are taken to the camps at night and beaten for hours with thick sticks, bars and army batons. Huts and houses have been torched. An unofficial curfew is in force in the poor suburbs of Harare, the capital. The MDC says that ten of its supporters have been killed, some shot dead. The opposition also says that some 3,000 families have had to flee their homes, 500 people have been put in hospital and over 400 opposition activists have been arrested."
Ind: Church leaders call for intervention to "avert genocide"
arms shipment refused in South Africa, then in Mozambique, now in Angola

Gdn: estimate of dead in Darfur reaches 300,000

BBC: Bosnian Serbs convicted of war crimes for massacre in 1992

BBC: unmanned Georgian drone shot down; Russia claims it was work of Abkhaz rebels

BBC: nearly 100 die in Sri Lanka, in battles between the LTTE and gov't forces

LAT: rice prices straining families in the Philippines, largest rice importer in world
"'Rice is something you need every day,' [a resident of Manila] said. 'When it gets to the point that families can't afford to buy 2 kilos a day, that's when people will get really mad.'"

Gdn: Clinton issues threat to Iran
"In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, she was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. She said: 'In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.'"

CSM: new organization of former Jihadis to work for tolerance in UK
"The Quilliam Foundation – named for a 19th-century British convert to Islam – aims to propagate a tolerant and pluralistic view of Islam among young Muslims who are the most vulnerable to radicalism."

BBC: the noble donkey, Facebook unite Cypriots