In Iraq, a car bomb in Basra killed at least 33 people, CNNa mortar attack in southern Baghdad killed 9 people,Yahoo! Newsand 8 U.S. soldiers died.icasualties.orgPolice found 22 bodies with bullet wounds and signs of torture in Baghdad;Reutersnorthwest of the city, at an improvised checkpoint, 19 civilians were dragged from their cars and shot.Kuwait News AgencyTwenty-one Kurds and Shiites, many of them high school students, were ordered off a bus and executed in Ain Laila.Belleville News DemocratIn Baquba 7 policemen were killed,BBCand the heads of 8 Sunni men were found in Dole banana boxes.Indian ExpressReutersSix more policemen were killed in …

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called for the United States to increase its propaganda efforts in the Middle East,BBC Newsas riots over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad continued around the world. In Nigeria 16 people were killed in rioting and 11 churches were burned; in Libya at least 10 people were killed; and in Pakistan at least 5 people were killed. In Volgograd, Russia, officials closed the city newspaper after it published a cartoon that showed Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, and Buddha watching TV together. Fifteen thousand people protested the cartoons in London. “We have to speak up,” said a Muslim …

A Christian martyr. Riots over blasphemous cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad broke out in India, Indonesia, Kashmir, Palestine, Thailand, the autonomous Somali region of Puntland, and Afghanistan�??where 11 demonstrators were killed, at least 4 of them by NATO troops. A Taliban commander offered 100 kilograms of gold to anyone who killed those responsible for the cartoons. Other anti-Muhammad-cartoon protests were held in London and Philadelphia. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan called on newspapers to stop re-publishing the drawings, and U.S. President George W. Bush condemned the riots but also criticized publishers. “With freedom,” said the President, “comes the responsibility to …

In Iraq a car bomb killed 16 people and wounded 90, 14 bodies were found stacked in a hole, 5 U.S. troops were killed, and Saddam Hussein was boycotting his own trial.CNN.comProfessor Philippe Sands of University College, London, said he had seen a secret memo that details a January 2003 meeting between British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush. According to Sands’ account of the memo, Blair offered Bush full British support for an invasion of Iraq regardless of whether U.N. inspectors found evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Bush also told Blair that he was …

United States officials met in China with their North Korean counterparts and warned them that talks would cease if they did not stop issuing “bellicose” statements. The North Koreans admitted they already have nuclear weapons and may test, export, or use them depending on U.S. actions; Donald Rumsfeld thought this might present an opportunity for another “regime change.” The U.S. warned Iran not to meddle in Iraq’s political affairs and accused the country of sending agents into the south to promote an Iranian model of government; to counter the damage, troops and intelligence officers were asking Iraqi clerics to please …

Hans Blix, the chief United Nations weapons inspector, ordered Iraq to destroy all its Al Samoud 2 missiles after U.N. tests determined that the missiles exceed the 150-kilometer range set by the Security Council. The lightest version of the missile, Blix said, has a range of 193 kilometers. “If Iraq decides to destroy the weapons that were long-range weapons, that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said President Bush. “So the idea of destroying a rocket, or two rockets, or however many he’s going to destroy, says to me he’s got a lot more weapons to destroy.” United Nations weapons …

United Nations weapons inspectors began their work in Iraq; among the first installations to be inspected were Al Dawrah and Al Nasr, two factories that Tony Blair and George W. Bush, citing satellite photographs, had claimed were sites of renewed production of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Inspectors found nothing but ruins. Another factory (known as Al Furat) that the United States has cited as evidence of a nuclear weapons program was also inspected and showed no signs of illegal activity. It was reported that one of the weapons inspectors is the co-founder of Black Rose, “a Washington-area pansexual S&M …

The United States Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve a bill creating a department of “homeland” security one week after the House did so. Nine senators opposed the bill, including Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who argued forcefully that this “monstrosity,” which will be cobbled together from the parts of 22 separate agencies, will do very little to prevent terrorist attacks. “Osama bin Laden is still alive and plotting more attacks while we play bureaucratic shuffleboard,” Byrd said. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review issued its first opinion ever; the court decided that the federal government need not be …

President George W. Bush claimed in a speech that Saddam Hussein could attack America “on any given day”; he accused Hussein of harboring terrorists, stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, and using such weapons on his own people. “Neither the United States of America nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small,” the President said. New documents were declassified concerning tests of biological and chemical warfare agents that were conducted by the United States government on its own soldiers in Alaska, Maryland, Hawaii, Canada, and Britain during …

Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey withdrew from the November election after new evidence emerged that he had accepted “improper gifts” from a contributor; Torricelli said that he did not want to jeopardize Democratic control of the Senate. A new poll found that most Americans are opposed to invading Iraq if it means significant Iraqi civilian casualties; a majority of those polled also said that they were more concerned about the economy than about Saddam Hussein’s putative weapons of mass destruction and that Congress should be more critical of President Bush’s war plans. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle said that …

Preparing for a potential strike against Iraq, the United States plucked Vice President Dick Cheney out of hiding and sent him touring Arabia to summon support from the region’s leaders. In the meantime, a special envoy was sent to Israel to make peace between Ariel Sharon and Yasir Arafat after a week of suicide bombings and other violence in which scores were killed, including a Palestinian woman and her four children when a bomb exploded near their donkey cart. U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan called on Israel to end its “illegal occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and …