IRAQ: BODY COUNT

Washington Post: Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000

- A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

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ROBERT FISK

Independent: The Age of Terror - a landmark report
by Robert Fisk

With chaos stretching from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, we have never lived in a more dangerous time. Over the next 15 pages and 7,000 words, our man in the Middle East looks back over a lifetime of covering war and death, and lays out a bleak future for all of us - one that even those living in the comfort of the Home Counties cannot escape

NORTH KOREA

Asia Times: Kim's message: War is coming to US soil
By Kim Myong Chol ("Unofficial" spokesman of Kim Jong-il and North Korea.)

The Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea announced on October 3 that the DPRK planned to conduct a nuclear test. The Foreign Ministry stated that the planned nuclear test was in response to the grave situation created by the US, where "the supreme national security interests of the DPRK are at stake with the Korean nation standing at the crossroads of life and death".

The nuclear test, once conducted, will have far-reaching implications for the Koreas and the rest of the world. It carries five messages.

NORTH KOREA

Reuters: North Korea says conducted nuclear test

SEOUL (Reuters) -
North Korea said on Monday it had safely and successfully carried out an underground nuclear test, flying in the face of a warning from the
U.N. Security Council.


South Korea's military ordered army units to step up their state of alert after the announcement by the reclusive communist state, which came as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrived in Seoul.

The U.S. Geological Survey said it had detected a 4.2 magnitude quake in North Korea at 10:35 local time (0135 GMT) on Monday, confirming a similar report from South Korea.

U.S. defense officials were still saying they could not confirm a nuclear test, however.