The entire population of northern Niger's remote desert town of Iferouane has fled, a local official told BBC last week. Deputy mayor Mohammed Oumma said 5,000 residents were displaced following army reprisals in operations against Tuareg guerillas. The government in Niamey denies that Iferouane, home to several uranium mines, has become a ghost town. (BBC, Nov. 19) President Mamadou Tandja Nov. 23 prolonged an emergency zone in Niger's desert north region of Agadez, extending for a further three months the "state of alert" declared in August. (Reuters, Nov. 23)

Continuing to demonstrate hyper-priapism, oil inches unsteadily but seemingly inexorably towards the symbolic watershed of $100 per barrel despite high output. Prices briefly rose to over $95 a barrel before dropping back to just over $92 Nov. 29 as an Enbridge Inc. crude pipeline linking Canada to the US exploded in Minnesota. Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi helped the price level off by reiterating OPEC's stance that crude supply is healthy, saying "there is no relationship between the fundamentals today and the price... We believe that the world market is well supplied and petroleum inventories are comfortable." (Thomson Financial, Nov. 29) This is precisely what is so scary. OPEC is already pumping it out like crazy, with Saudi Arabia the only member with real available spare capacity to bring to the market...

Australia's Labor Party prime minister-elect Kevin Rudd said Nov. 30 he will pull the country's 550 combat troops out of Iraq by the middle of 2008. Rudd was elected in a landslide Nov. 24, ousting veteran conservative prime minister John Howard, a supporter of the US-led war in Iraq. (AFP, Nov. 30) In the latest in the growing string of US atrocities in Iraq, soldiers opened fire on a car that tried to run a road block during a supposed operation against al-Qaeda in Baiji, 140 miles north of Baghdad, Nov. 27. A wounded child was found inside the vehicle, and was transferred to a military medical facility where he died. "We regret that civilians are hurt or killed while coalition forces work diligently to rid this country of the terrorist networks that threaten the security of Iraq and our forces," said US military spokesman Commander Ed Buclatin. (AFP, Nov. 27)

A nuclear war between Israel and Iran would be mutually devastating, but Israel might survive as a state, according to a new study by Anthony Cordesman of the DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. According to "Iran, Israel and Nuclear War," the superiority of Israel's presumed nuclear arsenal would offset the disadvantages of the country's tiny territory. Iran's nuclear strikes would likely target the Tel Aviv area and Haifa, killing 200,000 to 800,000 outright—but recovery would be "theoretically possible in population and economic terms." By contrast, Israeli nuclear attacks on Iran would kill between 16 million and 28 million, making recovery "not possible in the normal sense of the term." (Washington Jewish Week, Nov. 29)

With all eyes on the Israeli-Palestinian "breakthrough" at the Annapolis talks, the West Bank is under siege—this time by Palestinian security forces. Hisham Baradi, 36, an anti-Annapolis protester with the Hizb al-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), was killed when Palestinian Authority police opened fire on marchers in Hebron Nov. 27. At least 60 were injured in street clashes. The protests were jointly organized by Hizb al-Tahrir and Hamas. Earlier that day, Palestinian police barred the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) from marching against the Annapolis summit in Ramallah. (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 28; YNet, Nov. 27) On the Israeli side, right-wing protesters packed Jerusalem's Paris Square Nov. 26, shouting "no" to a divided Jerusalem and "yes" to more West Bank settlements. The rally followed a larger protest at the Western Wall, where some 15,000 prayed for the Annapolis talks to fail. (Washington Jewish Week, Nov. 29)

Six days before President Nicolas Sarkozy is to visit Algiers, the Algerian veterans' minister Mohamed Cherif Abbas was quoted in the daily Al-Khabar Nov. 26 attributing Sarkozy's rise to a "Jewish lobby" that holds sway over French politics, and implying the president—whose maternal grandfather was Jewish—exploited family connections. (AFP, Nov. 28) The comments came as the new violence in Paris' suburbs reached a height—and spread to Toulouse, where a library was set on fire and a dozen cars were torched. The riots, sparked by the deaths of two teenagers in a police car collision with a motorbike Nov. 25, this time saw North African youth firing on police with shotguns. "This is a real guerrilla war," senior police union official Patrice Ribeiro told RTL radio. (AFP, NYT, Nov. 28)

Japan's House of Councillors passed a bill Nov. 28 to end the nation's air force mission in Iraq. Japan withdrew its ground troops from Iraq in July 2006, but a Japanese unit stationed in Kuwait still provides air support for the Multi-National Force-Iraq. The bill, which passed 133-103, is supported primarily by the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ)—and is not expected to pass the more powerful House of Representatives, dominated by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). (Jurist, Nov. 28)

Pervez Musharraf, who resigned Nov. 28 as Pakistan's army chief, will be sworn in today as civilian president, resisting calls from opposition leaders to step down as head of state. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, former ISI chief, now takes over as army chief, a post Musharraf held since Oct. 1998. (Bloomberg, Nov. 29; Dawn, Pakistan, Nov. 28) On the morning of Nov. 29, a roadside bomb killed five Pakistani soldiers and wounded four more outside Miranshah, North Waziristan. (Reuters, Nov. 29)