On the night of Oct. 18, or the early hours of Oct. 19, suspected hired killers shot to death university student leader Milton Hernan Troyano Sanchez in Mosquera park in the city of Popayan, capital of the southwestern Colombian department of Cauca. Troyano was in his last semester as a biology student at the University of Cauca (Unicauca); he had been active since 2004 in campaigns defending public education and university democracy, and against authoritarianism and repression. (Message from Dora Troyano on Colombia Indymedia, Oct. 19; Joint Communique from 13 student committees and associations at Unicauca, Oct. 23)

On the order of President Vicente Fox, thousands of federal police backed up by army troops stormed past barricades in embattled Oaxaca City Oct. 29, seizing control of the city center from protesters who have held it for five months.

Nervous Democrats are distancing themselves from Jimmy Carter's forthcoming Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and urging him not to use the term to describe the continuing Israeli occupation and colonization of the Palestinian territories. It should be noted that Ha'aretz, Israel's most respected newspaper, wrote in an Sept. 13 editorial,"...the apartheid regime in the territories remains intact; millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation, and in the future they will turn the Jews into a minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.[...]"

From the UK Independent, Oct. 22, via Common Dreams:

Nothing else quite like it has happened at any time in the past 10,000 years. In just over a month an entire Antarctic ice shelf, bigger than a small country, disintegrated and disappeared, altering world atlases for ever.

From CTV, Oct. 28:

NATO's top commander apologized Saturday for civilians killed during battles between NATO-led forces and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan this week.

Brad Will (Bradley Roland Will), 36, a photojournalist for New York City's Independent Media Center (IMC) was fatally shot Oct. 27 when gunmen opened fire on a protest barricade in the besieged capital of Oaxaca state in southern Mexico.

First this, from DPA, Oct. 25:

Police protection given to German MP in headscarf row
BERLIN - A female member of parliament from the Greens party has been given police protection after calling on Muslim women in Germany to give up wearing headscarves, a parliamentary spokesman said Wednesday. Turkish-born Ekin Deligoz has been subject to attacks in fundamentalist media in Turkey and Germany for her views and has also received a death threat.

On Oct. 26 at a White House ceremony, President George W. Bush signed a bill authorizing 700 miles of new fencing along the nearly 2,000-mile US-Mexico border in what was viewed as an effort to boost anti-immigrant Republican candidates just before the Nov. 7 elections. "We have a responsibility to enforce our laws," said Bush. "We have a responsibility to secure our borders. We take this responsibility serious." (AP, Oct. 10)