From AFP via Pakistan's Daily Times, Oct. 28 (links added):

PALWAL — A serpentine column of India’s poorest of the poor is moving across cities, determined to reclaim their land taken over in the name of the country’s heady economic boom.

From AP, Oct. 27:

SAN FRANCISCO - Thousands of people called for a swift end to the war in Iraq as they marched through downtown on Saturday, chanting and carrying signs that read: "Wall Street Gets Rich, Iraqis and GIs Die" or "Drop Tuition Not Bombs."

Pakistani security forces backed up by helicopter gunships engaged militants at the madrassa of extremist cleric Maulana Fazlullah at Kabal in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province Oct. 26. The gun-battle apparently began when a patrol was fired on, and ended when security forces seized what was described as a militant training camp near the seminary. The cleric, known as "Maulana Radio" for his illegal broadcasts urging Taliban-style rule, is thought to have 4,500 armed followers. The fighting was in the Swat district, where a bomb attack on a truck carrying members of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary near Mingora one day earlier killed 17 militiamen and three civilians, damaging several shops.

The Colombian armed forces committed 955 extrajudicial executions between July 2002 and June 2007, according an investigation [online at Latin America Working Group] carried out by a coalition of 11 Colombian human rights organizations and released this month. Of these killings only two have resulted in a judicial conviction. The number of killings by Colombia's armed forces represents a 65% increase over the previous five-year period from 1997 to 2002.

From the Alternative Information Center, Oct 16.

The general secretary of Peace Now, Yariv Oppenheimer, did his reserve military duty at a checkpoint in the Jordan Valley, deep in the occupied Palestinian territories, acting just like any other good Israeli soldier.

From the NYC civil service paper The Chief-Leader, Oct 19:

Thompson and Israel

To the Editor:

The undersigned trade-union activists disagree with New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson and the Jewish Labor Committee, who have joined the witch-hunt against British unions for boycotting Israel (The Chief, Sept. 7).

From AP, Oct 19:

Glass Monument to Che in Venezuela Shot
CARACAS, Venezuela — A glass monument to revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara was shot up and destroyed less than two weeks after it was unveiled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government.

New Zealand's Maori Party harshly protested the Oct. 15 police raids on Maori activists in which 17 were arrested. "This action has violated the trust that has been developing between Maori and Pakeha and sets our race relations back 100 years," party leader Pita Sharples charged, using the Maori word for New Zealanders of European descent. He called the raids "storm trooper tactics" by a police force that consistently targets the indigenous population.