From the Sept. 30 edition of the New York Bangladeshi community paper Bangla Patrika. Translated from the Bangla by the NY Independent Press Association:

Federal and local law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, raided the Darul Ulum Shady Brook, a Madrasha (an Islamic institution) run by Bangladeshis, located at Connecticut.

Freedom's on the march in Afghanistan—freedom of opium kingpins to exploit the peasantry and make a killing. The opium economy has exploded since the country's "liberation" from the Taliban, and efforts by the Anglo-American-led occupation forces to crack down on it have only forced suffering peasants to sell their daughters to the drug lords to settle their debts. Reports have emerged (denied by the US) of aerial herbicide spraying to wipe out the crops—the same counter-productive method widespread in Colombia. A proposal by a European NGO to undercut the criminal networks by turning Afghanistan into a legal opium producer for the medical market, predictably, is dismissed by the US. From The Independent, Oct. 3:

Moroccan troops killed six undocumented African migrants attempting to reach the Spanish-controlled enclave of Melilla on the Mediterranean coast Oct. 6. Citing Abdellah Bendhiba, the governor of Nador province, news accounts said the Africans were killed in a "violent" assault by 400 migrants on guard posts outside the enclave. Security forces responded in self-defense, the report said. 290 were reported arrested, and Spain pledged to deport another 70 migrants from Mali who had reached the enclave "illegally." (EiTB24, Spain, Oct. 6)

On his October 4 visit to Nicaragua, US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick met with President Enrique Bolaños and other senior officials to discuss the country's ongoing political crisis. Speaking with reporters in Managua, Zoellick warned of stark consequences if an opposition alliance succeeds in ousting Bolaños.

Remember all those vicious rapes and senseless murders that served to justify the shoot-to-kill policy declared by state and federal authorities in post-Katrina New Orleans? Well, weeks after the fact, it turns out most of them probably didn't really happen. Michelle Roberts writes for the AP Sept. 27 (via Newsday):

NEW ORLEANS -- On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."

Al-Qaeda's second-in-command in Iraq has been killed, reports say. Iraqi and US officials said Abu Azzam, described as an aide to leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was killed in a joint operation in Baghdad. A US military official said Azzam was killed in a high-rise block in the Iraqi capital after a tip-off from an Iraqi citizen. "During the operation, which was held with the intent of capturing him, he fired and he was killed by return fire," Maj Flora Lee said.

But US and Iraq officials differed over the timing of the raid. Maj Lee said it happened at 04:50 local time Sept. 25, while Iraq officials said it occurred on the 26th. Another US spokesman said Azzam had been tracked for some time, and his death was a "significant development."

From New York Newsday, Sept. 27:

Off-duty cop under fire for accident

BY DARYL KHAN
STAFF WRITER

The witnesses' names were not known Monday, but the stories they told painted starkly different pictures of how a girl died Friday night, and they could determine the legal fate of an off-duty police officer.

Just before 10:30 p.m., Michael Carlo, an off-duty narcotics detective, was driving his 1997 Jeep Cherokee north on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, his pregnant wife in the passenger seat, when he struck Virginia Verdee, 12, who was returning home from dance practice at a nearby church.

On Sept. 19 Honduran defense minister Federico Breve ordered an investigation into a camp the Chicago-based firm Your Solutions was running in the community of Lepaterique to train security personnel for work in US-occupied Iraq. The Honduran daily La Tribuna revealed the training camp's existence, apparently based on evidence from a disgruntled sergeant identified as Wilmer Ruiz.

The company reportedly contracted to send 600 men to Iraq in or before October; it had already sent 36 Hondurans and was planning to send another 353 Hondurans, along with 211 Chileans. Benjamin Canales, Your Solutions director in Honduras, told the recruits they would be paid $900 to $1,500 a month during their six-month tours in Iraq. They were reportedly being trained by US and Chilean teachers in facilities of the state-owned Honduran Forest Development Corporation in a mountainous region 30 km northwest of Tegucigalpa. The instructors "explained to us that where we were going everyone would be our enemy, and we'd have to look at them that way, because they would want to kill us, and the gringos too," an unidentified trainee told the AFP wire service. "So we'd have to be heartless when it was up to us to kill someone, even it was a child."