Shops and stores in downtown Gaza City closed their doors Feb. 23 as part of a general strike to protest Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip. Shop owners carried banners reading "closed because of the siege" in Arabic and English. Jamal al-Khoudari, director of the newly-formed independent anti-siege committee, said Gaza dealers and merchants have lost about $150 million since their imported goods have been held up by Israel's blockade. Placing a monument for the victims of the siege in a public square in Gaza, al-Khoudari said "the siege [has] killed 99 people so far" with many more at risk. "Thousands of patients wait to have a number in the list of dead because they can't go outside for further treatment and can't have the needed medicine here." (Xinhua, Feb. 23)

Personally, we aren't too comforted by the fact that this thing was blown up in the sky instead of falling to earth—releasing all that toxic hydrazine into the atmosphere. But we are glad this Feb. 21 account from the UK Guardian closes with a quote from Michio Kaku, a principled voice for space demilitarization. Via the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space:

The New York Times reports in a front-page story Feb. 23 that the Justice Department has opened an internal ethics investigation into the notorious August 2002 Bybee Memo that gave the imprimatur of legality to the Administration's use of "waterboarding" and other forms of torture. Leave it to the far-left World Socialist Web Site (Feb. 21) to save from the Orwellian memory hole a new defense of torture's "legality" by Antonin Scalia:

The anti-immigration blog VDare (who get creds for being bilingual) approvingly note from a persual of Monterrey's daily El Porvenir that the Monterrey suburb of San Nicolas is planning to build a security fence on its border with the neighboring municipality of Guadalupe—reportedly, to keep out thieves and gang activity.

The high-tech Project 28 "virtual fence" on a 28-mile stretch of the US-Mexico border near Nogales, AZ, is ready for operation, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced Feb. 22. The $20 million project of sensor towers and advanced mobile communications, built by Boeing Co, was supposed to be completed in mid-2007 but was delayed by software problems, drawing congressional criticism. Homeland Security plans to extend the "virtual fence" elsewhere along the border in Arizona, as well as to sections of Texas.

On Feb. 11, the Nicaraguan navy captured the Honduran-flagged fishing boat Seas Star just east of the 82nd meridian in the Caribbean Sea. The 82nd meridian is claimed by Colombia as the border between its territorial waters and those of Nicaragua—a claim currently being contested by Managua before the World Court. Four crew members were onboard the Seas Star, with a full catch. A Nicaraguan police source said the crew was engaged in "piracy of the natural resources of Nicaraguan territory, and were detained in our jurisdictional waters."

Just as oil is hitting $100 a barrel, come warnings of an impending global food shortage. In an article based on a study by Goldman Sachs, the UK's Telegraph Feb. 9 argues that "peak oil" is morphing into "peak food" as more farmlands are turned over to so-called "biofuels." Food is rapidly becoming less affordable from West Africa to South Asia, where Pakistan has introduced ration cards allowing lower-income citizens to buy flour at subsidized prices.

Three bombings in as many days have left 140 dead in Afghanistan's Canadian-occupied Kandahar province. More than 100 were killed in a suicide attack on a dog-fighting competition on the outskirts of Kandahar city attended by local luminaries Feb. 17. A marketplace blast in Spin Boldak, apparently targeting a Canadian convoy, killed 38 civilians Feb. 18. A car bomb exploded near a police compound in Kandahar city, killing one civilian and wounding four, Feb. 19. (AP, Feb. 20; AP, Feb. 18)