Imagine! Venezuelan meddling in American politics! Where would they ever get an idea like that? From the New York Times via the Denver Post, Oct. 29:

Voting machines' Venezuela link probed

The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of the manufacturer of electronic voting systems used in Denver and Arapahoe County by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist government of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

From the Indo-Asian News Service (IANS), Oct. 30:

London -- James Bond actor Daniel Craig voted against plans to have suicide bombers in the new movie "Casino Royale" because that would anger Muslims.

From AP, Oct. 30:

MARSEILLE -- France's interior minister sent riot police to patrol the southern port city of Marseille yesterday after a group of marauding teenagers torched a bus, gravely burning a young woman.

Which is more hilarious? The US warning regional powers against carrying out a "proxy war" in Somalia while Washington itself is openly backing the warlord alliance that opposes the Islamic Courts Union? Or Eritrea's apparent backing of the Islamic Courts Union to oppose rival Ethiopia even as it uses the supposed jihadist threat to repress freedom at home? From Reuters, Oct. 30:

A bomb blast ripped through a crowd of laborers lining up for work offers in a square in Baghdad's Shi'ite Sadr City enclave Oct. 29, killing at least 25 people and wounding 60. It was the most recent of several attacks by presumed Sunni insurgentsin Sadr City. In July, more than 60 people were killed when a car bomb blasted through a market in the district. (Reuters, Oct. 31) But this attack came as US troops are sweeping Sadr City and throwing up barricades and checkpoints in a search for a kidnapped US soldier. (WP, Oct. 30 via Electronic Iraq) Sadr City residents demonstrated Oct. 30 against the siege of their district by US forces. Shi'ite MP Fallah Hassan Shanshal blaimed US troops for all attacks citizens in the district. Radical Shi'ite leaders Moktada al-Sadr's local office threatened a campaign of "civil defiance" if siege is not lifted. (Alsumaria TV, Iraq, Oct. 30)

Pakistan's army admitted Oct. 31 it had killed up to 80 in an early-morning strike on a supposedly al-Qaeda-linked madrassa in a tribal area near the Afghan border. The military action sparked protests in the area, and in the neighbouring North-West Frontier Province, where a local minister belonging to the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami resigned. The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, the religious coalition that rules the province, announced it would organize nation-wide protests beginning Oct. 31. Qazi Hussein Ahmed, leader of JI and the MMA, rejected the military claim that the madrasa was harboring militants and said a number of children were among the dead. He asserted that the army had acted under pressure from the US.

An Oct. 24 explosion at the University of Atlantico left four students dead and four wounded in the city of Barranquilla, capital of Atlantico department on Colombia's Caribbean coast. (Some sources say three students were killed and five wounded.) The police announced on Oct. 25 that the wounded students would be investigated for their presumed responsibility in the explosion. Another two students have also been arrested in connection with the incident.

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)