Pakistani security forces reportedly arrested 12 personnel of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards near the border town of Mashkel Oct. 26. According to sources, the Revolutionary Guards were travelling in two vehicles and were intercepted at Jowdar by Pakistan's Frontier Corps. While one Frontier Corps spokesman said the 12 were civilians, widespread media accounts in Pakistan say they were Revolutionary Guards carrying out an operation against the Jundallah insurgent organization. (The Nation, Islamabad, Oct. 27)

The US embassy in Pakistan rejected Oct. 23 claims that an Islamabad warehouse in the possession of a subcontractor to Xe Worldwide, formerly Blackwater, was used to store heavy arms and ammunition for the company. Said the statement: "Kestral Logistics is a private logistics company that handles the import of equipment and supplies provided by the US to the government of Pakistan. All of the equipment and supplies are imported at the request of the Pakistan government, which also certifies the shipments." It also said that the media outlets that published the story did not contact the embassy for comment. (Daily Times, Islamabad, Oct. 24)

From Amnesty International, Oct. 27:

Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies. These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.

Palestinians again clashed with Israeli police forces at the al-Aqsa Mosque Oct. 24, leaving 17 protesters and nine officer injured, and 21 Palestinians detained. The violence erupted when members of the Islamic Movement mobilized to the site to prevent followers of the right-wing Eretz Israel Shelanu from holding a gathering at the Temple Mount.

Six months after the end of Sri Lanka's civil war some 245,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) remain in camps, where aid donors are increasingly concerned over harsh conditions. A UN official warned Sri Lanka that international donors are less likely to provide funding if authorities continue to restrict IDPs' freedom of movement. Neil Buhne, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sri Lanka, said "donor fatigue is really in respect to continuing these closed camps."

Although still blind to the related human rights violations, the scientific community finally acknowledges that "biofuels" fuel deforestation—and thereby result in a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Here's the abstract of the story that appears in the Oct. 22 edition of Science, "Fixing a Critical Climate Accounting Error":

Santiago Alvarez, underwriter of accused right-wing Cuban terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and himself convicted in weapons stockpiling for a supposed terror plot, was released from US immigration custody in Georgia Oct. 22. Alvarez pleaded guilty in 2006 to weapons charges related to what the government called a scheme to overthrow Fidel Castro. His sentence was reduced from four years to 11 months for voluntarily handing over a hidden arms cache. Alvarez, a Miami developer, then got more time for refusing to testify against Posada in an immigration fraud case. Prosecutors said Alvarez was on a boat that secretly ferried Posada from Mexico to Miami in 2005. A US resident, Alvarez was eligible for deportation, but the US doesn't generally deport Cubans; he therefore remained in immigration custody after his release from prison in November 2008. The 2006 bust yielded 30 automatic rifles, a rocket launcher, several grenades, over 200 pounds of dynamite, and 14 pounds of C-4 explosives. (Havana Times, Oct. 23; AP, UPI, Oct. 22)

On Oct. 21, the federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia affirmed, in the well-known Blackwater/Xe case, that the murder of civilians in connection with an armed conflict overseas is actionable in a US court under the controversial Alien Tort Claims Act of 1789. The court relied on the universal acceptance, everywhere in the world, of Common Article 3 to the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits the murder of civilians in an armed conflict.