Econ: international assistance seeking Somalia
BBC: Eyl is pirate haven
"The town is a safe-haven where very little is done to stop the pirates - leading to the suggestion that some, at least, in the Puntland administration and beyond have links with them.
Many of them come from the same clan - the Majarteen clan of the president of Somalia's transitional federal government, Abdullahi Yusuf."
NYT: with economy still under Mugabe's control, inflation continues to spiral in Zimbabwe"Economists here and abroad say Zimbabwe’s economic collapse is gaining velocity, radiating instability into the heart of southern Africa. As the bankrupt government prints ever more money, inflation has gone wild, rising from 1,000 percent in 2006 to 12,000 percent in 2007 to a figure so high the government had to lop 10 zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation’s calculators from being overwhelmed. (Had it left the currency alone, $1 would now be worth about 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollars.)"
WSJ: holy mackerel! fishy prison currency seems to have more value
"Mr. Levine says he used his macks to get his beard trimmed, his clothes pressed and his shoes shined by other prisoners. "A haircut is two macks," he says, as an expected tip for inmates who work in the prison barber shop. There's been a mackerel economy in federal prisons since about 2004, former inmates and some prison consultants say. That's when federal prisons prohibited smoking and, by default, the cigarette pack, which was the earlier gold standard."
BBC: rebel General Nkunda to expand war in Congo
BBC: Uganda asks aid agencies to stop supplying the LRA
LAT: presidential election in Sudan underway with candidates from north and south
"...can the partnership that ended a 21-year civil war between Muslim Arab northerners and mostly Christian and animist rebels from the south survive a knock-down, drag-out presidential race?
The election promises not only to select the next leader of Africa's largest country, but it also could play a key role in determining whether Sudan breaks apart. In 2011, southerners will vote on secession, and their decision will depend partly on who wins the presidency.
There's still a chance that the showdown will never take place. Immediately after the SPLM's political bureau announced in August that Kiir would run, other top officials of the party insisted that a final decision had not been made. The statements appeared to reveal internal divisions."
LAT: Iraqi gov't takes 'control' of Sunni Awakening groups
AP: two Shiite mosques bombed in Baghdad; 19 dead
"No group claimed responsibility, but attacks on Shiite civilians are widely associated with Sunni extremists like al-Qaida in Iraq hoping to re-ignite the sectarian conflict that pushed the nation to the brink of civil war two years ago."
Econ: Petraeus is off to head up Centcom, and shift focus to Afghanistan
LAT: where 3 warlords in particular seem to be generating more violence
The three warlords' organizations are arrayed in an arc along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. Haqqani and Hekmatyar have directed attacks in and around the Afghan capital, Kabul, and helped revitalize the insurgency in eastern Afghanistan, where U.S. forces are concentrated. Omar's influence is mainly in the Taliban heartland to the south, radiating outward from Kandahar...
The three warlords have long-standing ties to Pakistan's powerful spy service, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which U.S. officials have accused of collaborating with insurgent groups and tipping them to American strikes. The ISI has "a desire to maintain their status as leaders," said a senior U.S. military analyst, referring to the three chieftains, who represent one way for Pakistan to influence events in Afghanistan.
Despite their similar backgrounds, the three have clashed at times and competed to take responsibility for attacks. Hekmatyar was a Taliban enemy as it rose to power, and Haqqani formally allied himself with the movement only after it had seized power and offered him a Cabinet post. Haqqani was rumored this year to have circulated a letter criticizing Omar's leadership...
U.S. officials said there were as many as 14 disparate groups taking part in the insurgency in Afghanistan. But Omar, believed to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, remains the spiritual leader of what U.S. officials often call the "Big T" Taliban, the core tribes displaced from power in Kabul in the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan."
WP: Abkhazia celebrates independence day, if not independence
"Fifteen years ago this week, flames shot out the windows of the parliament building and the final battle of a separatist war raged over this seaside city. When it was over, the Georgian army had retreated and several hundred thousand ethnic Georgians had fled. Since then, the inhabitants of this 3,300-square-mile spit of subtropical coastline and snowcapped mountains have considered Sept. 30 their independence day."
NYT: (some) Georgians celebrate Stalin
"All Georgians respect Stalin, because he was a great leader who created a great empire — and of course, he was the most famous Georgian who ever lived,” Mr. Ziyadaliev said."
AP: meanwhile Russians exonerate Czar, find that he and family victims of political repression
"...it is a step in the direction of condemnation of the Bolsheviks who killed the family and, by extension, of the entire Soviet era. And it is likely to put the Romanov family in a more positive light for coming generations of Russians."
Gdn: the power of (literal) rock music in Uganda
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also, there's a debate tonight.
Wonkette: Biden should win, because Obama is the antichrist (as confirmed by a South Carolina mayor)
Slate: Palin attended 5 colleges
Slate: try to diagram her sentences!
"In a few short weeks, Sarah Palin has produced enough poppycock to keep parsers and diagrammers busy for a long time. In the end, though, out of her mass of verbiage in the Sean Hannity interview, Palin did manage to emit a perfectly lucid diagram-ready statement that sums up, albeit modestly, not the state of the economy that she was (more or less) talking about but the quality of her thinking":
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