This may be bad news for Detroit, but given fast-growing evidence of global climate destabilization, it's damn good news for the rest of us. From the New York Times Nov. 2:

DETROIT, Nov. 1 - October, which is the start of the new model year, used to be a month for the auto industry to celebrate. This year, it was a month for Detroit to forget.

After threatening another popular uprising if stalled presidential elections were not allowed to proceed, Bolivian indigenous and populist leader Evo Morales hailed a deal to allow the race to proceed in December. The crisis, which had once again paralyzed Bolivia's government, seems averted for the moment, as the House of Deputies resumed work Nov. 8. Legislators are expected to ratify a date of Dec. 18 for the hotly-contested elections. (Prensa Latina, Nov. 8)

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez charged Nov. 1 that Colombian intelligence agents were behind plots against his government, although he denied that they had undermined relations between the two neighbors.

The accusations come days after the firing of a top official in the Colombian secret police and the resignations of two others in a scandal over alleged links to right-wing paramilitary groups.

In an interview with Caracas-based Telesur TV, Chavez said his government has "many pieces of evidence" that "conspiracies are hatched against us in Colombian intelligence bodies." He did not directly link the resignations in Colombia to his claims, but suggested that the recent scandals illustrate his complaint.

Former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori, facing over 20 criminal charges in Peru, was arrested Nov. 7 by Chilean police following his surprise arrival in Santiago from Japan the previous day. The former leader said he was on the way to launch a campaign for the Peruvian presidential election next April. The arrest was ordered by Chilean Supreme Court Justice Orlando Alvarez upon the request of the Peruvian government. The two countries have not reached agreement on Fujimoli's fate. Peru is pressing for extradition, while Chile's government says its supreme court will have to rule in the matter. Fujimoli, born in Peru to Japanese immigrants and was president from 1990 to 2000, fled Peru in November 2000 after a corruption scandal toppled his government.

A Jewish inmate at California's San Quentin prison says his life is in danger because he's being housed with white inmates, many of whom belong to anti-Semitic white supremacist gangs. The inmate is asking prison authorities to reclassify him from "white" to "other." Stephen Liebb, an Orthodox Jew and UCLA law school graduate, has been imprisoned since 1981 on a murder charge. Since 1995, he has been incarcerated at San Quentin, where he says he has often been forced to live and to pray in close quarters with neo-Nazis and white supremacists covered in swastikas and SS lightning-bolt tattoos.

Earl Krugel, a Jewish Defense League militant convicted of plotting to bomb a Los Angeles mosque and the office of a local politician, was murdered just three days after being transferred to a new prison. The former dental assistant, who received the maximum 20-year sentence by a Los Angeles court in September, was killed by a fellow inmate while exercising at a medium-security prison in Arizona. The FBI has opened an investigation into the killing, but would not comment further. It is believed Krugel had received threats in the past from both white supremacist and Islamist militants.

A woman poet well-known in literary circles in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat has died after being severely beaten by her husband, authorites report. Nadia Anjuman, 25, died late on Nov. 1, said provincial police chief Nisar Ahmad Paikar. “We have arrested her husband, accused of killing her," Paikar told AFP. The couple had a six-month-old daughter. Anjuman, a student at Herat university, had a first book of poetry printed this year. She was popular in Afghanistan and neighboring Iran.

Australian authorities say they foiled a large-scale terrorist attack, arresting 15 people in raids in Sydney and Melbourne Nov. 7. Among the arrrested is Muslim cleric Abu Bakr, who had earlier this year stated his support for Osama bin Laden. One suspect who had been under surveillance was shot and wounded after he had allegedly fired at officers near Sydney's Green Valley Mosque. "I am satisfied that we have disrupted what I would regard as the final stages of a large-scale terrorist attack, or the launch of a large-scale terrorist attack here in Australia," New South Wales Police Commissioner Ken Moroney said. Australia's parliament rushed through amendments to anti-terror laws Nov. 3 to allow police to charge people suspected in the early stages of planning an attack. (Stuff.co, NZ, Nov. 7)