mortars were fired [those pesky local citizens]

NYT: Taliban in southern Pakistani city of Quetta a special concern for the US
The Taliban operations in Quetta are different from operations in the mountainous tribal areas of Pakistan that have until now been the main setting for American unease. But as the United States prepares to pour as many as 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan, military and intelligence officials say the effort could be futile unless there is a concerted effort to kill or capture Taliban leaders in Quetta and cut the group’s supply lines into Afghanistan.

From Quetta, Taliban leaders including Mullah Muhammad Omar, a reclusive, one-eyed cleric, guide commanders in southern Afghanistan, raise money from wealthy Persian Gulf donors and deliver guns and fresh fighters to the battlefield, according to Obama administration and military officials...

The Taliban leaders have operated from Quetta for several years, but the increasing violence in southern Afghanistan suggests that the flow of arms, fighters and money there from the Pakistani sanctuary may be increasing.
NYT: US missile strikes in Pakistan, which have continued under Obama, major cause of resentment
BBC: 14 killed in mortar attack in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province
Militants effectively control large swathes of the region and the army is engaged in an operation to try to remove them... Local citizens were adamant that the mortar had been fired by the military. However, a military spokesman denied this.

"At least 13 civilians were killed when militants fired a mortar shell from Mirwali," the spokesman said. "It hit a house at Abbas Chowk near Darra Adam Khel... One soldier was also martyred, after which security forces responded and engaged the militants' positions."
LAT: Polish hostage killed by Pakistani militants, in video given to media

WP: Britain and the US both have Afghanistan-Pakistan envoys now
Britain's ambassador to Afghanistan, Sherard Cowper-Coles, who was once quoted as saying the military effort there was doomed to failure, was given a new job Monday _ tackling those problems that afflict both Afghanistan and its troubled neighbor, Pakistan... The spokesman, Michael Ellam, said Cowper-Coles would work in tandem with Richard Holbrooke, the new U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan appointed by President Barack Obama last month.

An Oxford-educated diplomat, Cowper-Coles has a reputation for frank talk that has occasionally embarrassed his bosses... More recently, a French newspaper quoted the then-ambassador to Kabul as saying the country might best be "governed by an acceptable dictator"...

NYT: revenge killing of Taliban members in eastern Afghanistan
On Saturday, something typical happened in eastern Afghanistan: Two Taliban guerrillas assassinated a top local politician. But on Sunday, something very unusual occurred, according to witnesses and Afghan intelligence officials.

Hundreds of people from around the district of Dara-e-Noor joined with the local police to corner the Taliban assassins. A firefight broke out. Eventually the wounded Taliban were captured. But instead of turning them over to the authorities, the villagers trussed the men to a tree and punched and kicked them to death.

Revenge killings are not unusual in Afghanistan; when the Taliban executed murder suspects in Kabul before the American invasion, they would shout, “In revenge, there is life!”

But such killings against the feared Taliban are relatively rare. The episode in Dara-e-Noor represented an uncommon response from local villagers, one motivated at least in part by an angry fear that Afghanistan’s deeply corrupt judicial system would turn the killers loose.
NYT: 2 NATO soldiers killed in suicide attack
BBC: poll shows Afghans increasingly pessimistic about their country
The approval rating for the central government in Kabul is still high - but is steadily falling... When people were asked what poses the biggest danger to the country, most said the Taleban. That has not changed in recent years - although the focus on the Taleban is slowly increasing and fewer people now see drug traffickers as the biggest threat.

There are some positives. Many people said everyday life had improved. Sixty-five per cent said the availability of clean water was somewhat good or very good, compared with 58% in 2005. Access to a supply of electricity has also increased slightly.

LAT: female suicide bomber kills 28 in Sri Lanka at processing center for the displaced
Beate Arnestad, a Norwegian filmmaker who made a 2007 documentary on two female Tamil Tiger suicide bombers, said those she met had been part of the Tigers for most of their lives, having been kidnapped, handed over to the group or run away to the join the group at a young age.

The young women had known little but conflict for most of their lives, Arnestad said, and were highly obedient to their commanders, who strictly controlled the information they received. She said she found them extremely fit, dedicated, intelligent and very proud of being part of the elite Black Tigers suicide squad. Arnestad said they would have been overachievers in a more conventional environment.
Gdn: the Red Cross evacuates 240 sick and wounded displaced
The patients had fled the last functioning hospital in the war zone in Puthukkudiyiruppu last week after it came under repeated artillery barrages that killed several patients. The Red Cross and government doctors set up a makeshift medical facility in an abandoned community centre and a school, Wijesinghe said. However, the area was shelled on Monday, she added...

In recent days, the military has reported an increasing flow of civilians out of the war zone. More than 1,000 civilians fled today , and 6,599 reportedly crossed yesterday, even as a female bomber killed 19 soldiers and 10 civilians at an army checkpoint. The government earlier said the blast had killed 20 soldiers and eight civilians.
NYT: but an estimated 250,000 civilians still trapped
On Monday, some 800 civilians had crossed the front lines and were being searched by soldiers before being sent to camps farther afield. The bomber detonated her explosives as she was being searched, said Gen. Udaya Nanayakkara, a spokesman for the Sri Lankan military. Sri Lankan television showed images of bodies, including that of a child, being carried away from the site of the attack.

The military would now change its procedures for processing civilians fleeing the fighting, General Nanayakkara said. “We’ll have to check civilians one by one,” he said. “It’s going to take more time.”

NYT: Palestine stops paying for Gaza wounded in Israeli hospitals
“We already pay $7 million a month to Israeli hospitals,” [Palestinian health minister, Fathi Abu Moghli] said in a telephone interview. “Since the first day of the Gaza aggression, I said that I will not send to my occupier my injured people in order for him to make propaganda at my expense, and then pay him for it.”

An Israeli clinic set up with great fanfare on the Israeli-Gaza border the day the war ended, Jan. 18, has already closed, since both Hamas, which governs Gaza, and the Palestinian Authority essentially boycotted it. The Palestinian Authority pays for much of its citizens’ care in Israel from its budget.

Israel has long pointed to its medical care of Palestinians as an example of its advanced skills and humanitarianism. Palestinians generally are eager to gain the benefit, but are also resentful. As relations have chilled, each side has accused the other of political manipulation.
Gdn: some Rafah tunnels back in business
But while the sandy border is marked with many large craters, the damage caused to the tunnels was, in many cases, repaired within days. Already some are operating again and new tunnels are being dug under the close eye of Hamas officials, who walk from one tent to the next clutching their walkie-talkies.

The smugglers believe their tunnels were simply too deep to be badly damaged, even by the heavy 500lb or one-tonne bombs dropped by Israeli F-16s. In most cases, the serious damage was only to the entrances to the tunnels, which were soon uncovered again by the Palestinians using bulldozers and then rebuilt. It may be that the focus of the Israeli attacks was on the weapons tunnels, which are closely guarded by Hamas and other armed groups and not open to public view.
NYT: Egyptians detain Gaza protester
For two days the authorities denied that he was being held. Then on Sunday, at 10 p.m., a security official at the American University in Cairo, where Mr. Rizk studies, was able to confirm his arrest to his family...

Now, according to the accounts of five eyewitnesses to Mr. Rizk’s arrest, and interviews with his parents, his sisters, human rights lawyers and some of his professors, it appears that the Egyptian authorities have turned to the country’s emergency law to silence criticism of its Gaza policy. The law, adopted to combat terrorism after President Anwar el-Sadat was gunned down in 1981, allows the government to detain people without charge and effectively eliminates any right to due process.

The government acknowledges holding about 1,800 prisoners without charge under the emergency law, but human rights groups say the number could be closer to 10,000. The law is routinely used against members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a banned but tolerated social and political movement. Dozens of Brotherhood followers have been arrested since the start of the Gaza conflict...

The group [that Phillip was with, Popular Committee in Solidarity With the Palestinian People] met Friday morning and took a bus north from Cairo to the Qalyubiya governate, an hour away. The demonstrators walked for about two hours, waving Palestinian flags and talking with local residents.
NYT: Israel strikes Gaza targets, bans Palestinians from entering Israel ahead of parliamentary election
CSM: cease-fire discussions a domestic political issue for Israel
Less than 48 hours before parliamentary elections here, the drive to reach a lasting cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel following their 22-day war is taking on new urgency.

If a deal isn't in place when Israelis go to the polls Tuesday, the ruling Kadima Party could take a significant hit. The centrist party led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni is already in second place in polls behind the hawkish Likud party, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing politician who was prime minister from 1996 to 1999. Ms. Livni and Mr. Netanyahu are the two main contenders for the country's new premiership.

But the left-leaning Labor Party, headed by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, could lose the most political ground as a result of the war – which came to an inconclusive halt Jan. 18 after both sides declared unilateral cease-fires – as many Israelis blame the "peaceniks" for not dealing with Hamas rockets on southern Israel much sooner.
BBC: Israeli elections Q and A

BBC: al-Qaeda Tunisia bombers in French court (minus Khalid Sheikh Mohammed)
A French court has sentenced a German convert to Islam to 18 years over an attack on a Tunisian synagogue that killed 21 people in 2002. Christian Ganczarski, who prosecutors believed had links with al-Qaeda, was arrested in France in 2003.

The court also sentenced Walid Nouar, the brother of the suicide bomber, to 12 years for his part in the attack on the synagogue in Djerba. Both men denied the charges and are expected to appeal against the verdict... French prosecutors believe it was organised by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks on the US - who is being held at the Guantanamo detention centre.

LAT: Obama invokes "state secrets" in case against Boeing subsidiary for rendition flights
Douglas Letter, representing the Department of Justice, told a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the Obama administration's position was "exactly" the same as that of the Bush White House, which argued the lawsuit would reveal government secrets and threaten national security.

The case was "thoroughly vetted with the appropriate officials of the new administration," said Letter, who was also involved in the case under President Bush. He said the judges would understand the government's stance once they read a classified affidavit explaining its claim of so-called state secrets privilege.

The ACLU lawsuit was filed against a transportation services company that helped the CIA move the men to places of interrogation as part of the "extraordinary rendition" program. The government intervened on behalf of Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Co., which the lawsuit said filed flight plans, devised itineraries and obtained landing permits for the jets that carried the men to places where they could be interrogated under torture.

A federal trial judge ruled last year that the government had properly invoked its state secrets privilege and dismissed the suit. The American Civil Liberties Union appealed that dismissal to the 9th Circuit, arguing that the men should be given the opportunity to prove their case without classified material...
Salon: more on state secrets, from Glenn Greenwald
Nobody -- not the ACLU or anyone else -- argues that the State Secrets privilege is inherently invalid... What was abusive and dangerous about the Bush administration's version of the States Secret privilege -- just as the Obama/Biden campaign pointed out -- was that it was used not (as originally intended) to argue that specific pieces of evidence or documents were secret and therefore shouldn't be allowed in a court case, but instead, to compel dismissal of entire lawsuits in advance based on the claim that any judicial adjudication of even the most illegal secret government programs would harm national security. That is the theory that caused the bulk of the controversy when used by the Bush DOJ -- because it shields entire government programs from any judicial scrutiny -- and it is that exact version of the privilege that the Obama DOJ yesterday expressly advocated (and, by implication, sought to preserve for all Presidents, including Obama).
Gdn: the lawyer of one of the parties to the case, the last British citizen still held at Guantánamo, says his release is urgent

NYT: federal court orders California to reduce prison overcrowding
Relying on expert testimony, the court ruled that the California prison system, the nation’s largest with more than 150,000 inmates, could reduce its population by shortening sentences, diverting nonviolent felons to county programs, giving inmates good behavior credits toward early release, and reforming parole, which they said would have no adverse impact on public safety. The panel said that without such a plan, conditions would continue to deteriorate and inmates might regularly die of suicide or lack of proper care...

Federal judges have already ruled that the state’s failure to provide medical and mental health care is killing at least one inmate every month and has subjected inmates to cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Constitution.

In their ruling on Monday, the judges ruled that reducing overcrowding was the only way to reform the prison health care system and encouraged plaintiffs’ and state lawyers to negotiate a way to cut the prison population. The judges also indicated that they would mandate a prison population cap of about 120 percent to 145 percent of the state’s designed capacity.

Gdn: Mugabe fails to release imprisoned opposition activists as promised
Doctors' affidavits seen by the Guardian reveal a pattern of torture of many of the 30 political and human rights activists held by the state for months. Nine of the prisoners seen by doctors were subjected to simulated drowning, being hung by their wrists in handcuffs and beaten, and high-voltage electric shocks...

Some were to be taken to hospital last Friday and then quietly freed by a judge in order for the regime to save face. Eight were to appear in court yesterday on the understanding they would be freed. But none of the detainees were produced after the prisons commissioner, Major-General Paradzai Zimondi, refused to hand them over...

The MDC is interpreting [Major-General Paradzai] Zimondi's intervention as evidence that the JOC [Joint Operations Command] intends to subvert the power-sharing administration by continuing the violence and intimidation against Tsvangirai's officials and supporters.

OSI: child soldier who recanted testimony in Lubunga ICC trial testifies again
In an unusual move, presiding Judge Adrian Fulford allowed the boy to tell his story without any prompting or interruptions by the prosecution or defense. All unnecessary court officers were removed from the room and the witness was shielded from defendant Lubanga’s direct view...

The beatings the children received the day they were kidnapped, Dieumerci said, only worsened once they arrived at the camp. The recruits were flogged with pieces of wood for even the most minor of offenses, including sickness or exhaustion, he said. They were also flogged if they could not complete a training exercise, misplaced their weapon, or tried to escape...

He was kept as a prisoner in yet another training camp until his father was able to pay for his freedom. After that, he went through a demobilization process with a humanitarian aid group.

Xinhua: a focus on reconciliation amidst mortar fire for new Somali president
President Ahmed, who arrived in Mogadishu on Saturday for the first time since his election on Jan. 31, held "consultative talks" with ministers in the caretaker government, security chiefs and local religious and clan leaders...

"We asked the president to keep on talking with those opposed to his government and accommodate everyone into the peace and he accepted it," Ahmed Diriye, spokesman for Hawiye clan elders who led the delegation of religious and clan elders in Mogadishu, told Xinhua.

Diriye said the president also accepted their offer of mediation between the government and the opposition, adding that the elders would try to get the consent of the opposition leaders for their mediation role...

On Saturday, a number of mortar shells were fired at the Presidential Palace in Mogadishu as the president was holding talks with officials at his residence, but no one was reportedly hurt .

Unlike previously, the Somali security forces and the African Union peacekeeping forces guarding the palace did not respond to the attacks after the president ordered them not to, the presidential spokesman said.

NYT: 4 US soldiers killed by car bomb in Mosul
Mosul, capital of Ninevah Province, remains one of the most violent places in Iraq. American soldiers are waging a counterinsurgency campaign there against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia , a homegrown Sunni extremist group which American intelligence officials say is foreign-led. Mosul is the last urban strong hold of the group; in other provinces they are hiding in rural or mountainous areas. Mosul also has been riven by tensions between Sunni Arabs and Kurds, with the two groups competing for power.
NYT: dealing with guns in the now-calm city of Karbala
The gun laws in Iraq have evolved over the last few years. During the height of the sectarian killing, both American and Iraqi soldiers allowed families one Kalashnikov or other weapon for their protection. In reality, families often kept many more weapons, tucked away in closets, buried in their yards or hidden under floorboards.

Over the last year, as the security in the country has stabilized, there has been an attempt to enforce stricter gun laws. Technically, every Iraqi citizen carrying a weapon is supposed to have a permit, although, of course, many Iraqis have held onto their weapons without permission.

NYT: ETA suspected of Madrid bombing
A car bomb that authorities believe was planted by Basque militant group ETA exploded early Monday near a trade fair complex in northeast Madrid. The blast blew out windows of nearby office buildings and sent up a plume of dark smoke, but there were no injuries.

If ETA was behind the bombing, it would be the first attack by the group in Madrid since a huge car bomb killed two people at Barajas International Airport in Madrid in December 2006.