More than 350 Taliban inmates began a hunger strike Nov. 8 at the Sarposa prison in Afghanistan's Kandahar province. The protest is in response to harsh conditions, including abuse by guards. The Afghan Ministry of Justice has sent a delegation to the prison to investigate. The Justice Ministry fears a potential prison break attempt, after authorities reportedly learned that trucks loaded with explosives were instructed to destroy the prison walls. Millions of dollars have been spent in the last year in an effort to bolster security at the prison. The Afghan government has also increased the armed presence at the facility in recent days.

There were initially positive signals that the Obama administration was correcting the atrocious legacy of the Bush administration's denial of global climate destabilization—which extended to falsifying science and censoring dissenters. Now it appears that Obama's EPA is itself silencing critics of the administration's favored policy of carbon-trading. From the New York Times, Nov. 9:

The United Nations has sent a disaster assessment team to El Salvador and released a $50,000 cash grant to help the Central American country recover from torrential rains that have caused massive flooding and triggered landslides, killing at least 140 people and displacing nearly 14,000 others.

Talks in Tegucigalpa between representatives of ousted Honduran president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales and de facto president Roberto Micheletti Bain have failed to revive the Tegucigalpa/San José Accord, an agreement the two sides signed on Oct. 30. Members of a Verification Commission established by the agreement had tried to salvage the accord by having the two sides meet again on Nov. 7.

The rapid failure of an Oct. 30 accord between Honduran president Manuel Zelaya and the country's de facto government "leaves egg on the faces of US and regional diplomats who had engineered the deal," according to an analysis piece by the Reuters news service. (Reuters, Nov. 6)

Two Czech commanders from the elite Fourth Brigade of the Rapid Reaction Forces who have just returned from Afghanistan wore the shield designs of Nazi SS brigades and divisions on their helmets for almost their entire tour of duty in Logar province, according to a Nov. 9 report in the Prague daily Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD). The report notes that these same commanders were decorated days earlier in a ceremony in Žatec for their model fulfillment of the Afghan mission by Czech Defense Minister Martin Barták and Chief of General Staff Vlastimil Picek. MfD reports there is no evidence that Barták and Picek were aware of the two elite soldiers' Nazi sympathies. The helmets of company lieutenant Jan Čermák and warrant officer Hynek Matonoha were "decorated" with the shields of the SS Hohenstaufen and Dirlewanger brigades.

While the US Embassy in Bogotá says the new agreement for expanded US access to Colombian military bases enters into force immediately, a Colombian court ruling finds the agreement is "broad and unbalanced" in favor of the United States and not based on any previous treaty, so therefore must be reviewed by Colombia's Congress and Constitutional Court. The agreement puts no limits on the number of US personnel to be deployed in Colombia nor on the number of military bases they will use.

The US and OAS appear divided on whether to recognize the upcoming Honduran elections after the collapse of the Washington-brokered deal to solve the political crisis in the Central American country. Ousted President Manuel Zelaya told Radio Globo Nov. 6 that the deal is "dead," adding: "It makes no sense to continue duping the Honduran people with this type of agreement which only shows a lack of political will to resolve the problem."