The pastor of a 50-member strong American church has announced that he is no longer declaring September 11th, 2010, an "International Burn a Koran Day".

Pastor Terry Jones, leader of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, has received numerous pleas, including from high-ranking members of the U.S. Administration, to cancel his plans of organizing public burnings of the Koran.

The UN is investigating claims of a mass rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo; a country one UN official called "the rape capital of the world". The alleged incidents were reported to have happened within miles of an UN base. The suspects are members of rebel militias. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is sending two high-level officials to Congo to help investigate the allegations.

World leaders assembled in Strasbourg shared their views on the importance of supporting the war in Afghanistan, expressing a commonly held fear that al-Qaeda would be very likely more able to launch a terrorist attack in Europe than in the United States because of geographic proximity.

I mentioned two weeks ago that Pakistan, in the wake of the Kabul terrorist attacks and with insurgent activities increasing, would have to start talking very seriously with the U.S. and with Afghanistan. Consequently, it was not entirely unexpected that the foreign ministers of Afghanistan and Pakistan met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

I remember discussing last November that the Mumbai terrorists attacks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumbai_attacks) had far-reaching implications in the international fight against terrorism. Besides obviously being a human tragedy, the attacks served as an encouragement for other extremist groups to plan similar violent acts. It was not even a question of whether there would be a similar attack in Afghanistan, but when it was going to occur.