Suicide Bombs Just Won’t Stop Afghanistan took another grieving day today after a Taliban suicide bomber packed a tanker truck chock full of explosives and detonated it in Kandahar’s temporary council office. Felt throughout the city, the bomb killed six people, wounded 40 and caused five houses to cave in on themselves. Few newspapers or Web sites ever analyze what bomb-wounded really means: these folks may not be dead, but they’re badly burnt, some of them maimed or blinded, nursing gashes and lost limbs. Even one dead or one wounded is still too many.

Another Bomb and…Attending School is a…Sin? And in the same article as above, we learn that in another part of Afghanistan, the Nangarhar Province, not only did a Taliban suicide bomber slam into an American military convoy, killing what media outlets have estimated at between 56 and 74 people, but also that two as-yet-unidentified motorcyclists sprayed eight adolescent girls on their way to school with battery acid. Why? Because they were women attempting to receive an education.

When Will the Congo Heal If it’s not Belgian oppression, it’s widespread rape. If it’s not rape, it’s coerced fighting. Young men in eastern Congo have run from their homes, choosing displacement over membership to rebel forces. These men have explained the rebels beat their home doors down, seeking new ranks, stopping at nothing to gain new hands to help their cause.

Europe Wants no More from Russia (With Love or Not) Tired of facing the fact that more than 60 percent of its energy comes from imports (two fifths of that Russian in source), the EU is planning a supergrid of internal power supplies (e.g. increasing dependence on North Sea area wind farms) that would rely less on Russian monopoly.