The US Army is probing claims that its troops in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters they had killed and used the smoldering corpses to taunt insurgents. An Australian TV show broadcast images Oct. 19 of US soldiers incinerating the corpses outside Gonbaz in southern Afghanistan (Faryab provicne) with the bodies facing west toward Mecca, the direction of Muslim daily prayers—in an apparent deliberate denigration of Islamic belief. Islam prohibits cremation and considers desecration of bodies to be blasphemous.

In what has become a yearly ritual, activists from the American Indian Movement (AIM) staged angry protests at the Columbus Day march in Denver, while the city's Italian-Americans intransigently refused to "get it." This from an AP account online at Indian Country Today:

As drums and chants echoed in the background, demonstrators briefly staged a mock death scene in the street Oct. 8 before a Columbus Day parade passed by.

From Chile's English-language Santiago Times, Oct. 14:

Second-To-Last Yagana Woman Dies Of A Heart Attack
The second-to-last member of Chile's pre-colonial Yagán tribe, 84-year-old Emelinda Acuña, died on Wednesday, taking with her the traditions, stories, and secrets of a little-known indigenous population. The only remaining pureblooded member of the Yagán tribe is now Acuña's sister-in-law, Cristina Calderón.

A picture of the Noble Drew Ali, North Carolina-born Prophet of the Moorish Science Temple of America, adorns a page on the progressive Muslim Wake Up! website featuring a story by Laury Silvers, who has taken note of our contention that Moorish Science, a little-known but highly influential precursor to the Black Muslim movement, represents an indigenous American form of Islam (see Moorish Science in the news, Sept. 21). Silvers calls for a more inclusive view of this tradition on the part of "mainstream" or orthodox Islam, while acknowledging stark doctrinal divisions.

Nourished by the Waters of Indigenous Islam

By Laury Slivers

Simply said, American Indigenous Islam in all its forms should be properly honored and respected by the Muslim community as part of the history and life of Islam globally. I do not mean simply Indigenous American Islam in the sense of the Islam of the slaves. I mean all of Indigenous American Islam, even the forms that are difficult for the “mainstream

Ten years after Niger's government and insurgents signed an accord to end the Tuareg rebellion, authorities have launched an economic assistance program for more than 3,000 ex-combatants in the country's north—the final phase as laid out in the peace pact. Under the project, 3,160 former combatants will be granted around US $300 each in the form of micro-loans for projects in animal husbandry, local crafts and vegetable gardening, said Michele Falavigna, Niger representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP).

On Oct. 11, unidentified gunmen shot dead Francisco Antonio Cuchillo Baltazar, a 57-year indigenous governor of Ginebra municipality of the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca, the authorities said. Cuchillo was hit by three bullets when he was waiting for a bus to return home. His daughter, Lili Cuchillo, said her father "was shot three times, one in the head and two in the chest, by an assault rifle. To this moment we do not have information about which armed group committed this crime." She said this murder "represents an attack on our communities. They took a leader away from us." On Sept. 5, Jorge Eduardo Cuchillo Baltazar, the governor's brother, was kidnapped and shot dead. His body was found near Ginebra. (Xinhua, Oct. 13)

On Oct. 8, Maryam Namazie of the Organization of Women's Liberation in Iran (OWLI) , was awarded the National Secular Society's first Irwin Prize for "Secularist of the Year" in London . The £5,000 annual prize, sponsored by NSS member Dr. Michael Irwin, was presented by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee at a lunch at London's Montcalm Hotel. The event also featured cabaret from stand-up comedian Stewart Lee, who is co-author of the controversial "Jerry Springer — the Opera," considered blasphemous by fundamentalist Christians.

For years, apologists for Israeli policy in the occupied territories, such as CAMERA, have claimed the system of "Jewish-only" roads did not exist, since they are intermittently open to Palestinian traffic. The system has been de facto and not de jure. According to the Israeli paper Ma'ariv, that may be about to change and become official Israeli policy, with a set of little-travelled Jewish-only superhighways scarring the West Bank, whilst Palestinians are consigned to use a system of smaller roundabout roads.