World military spending grew 45 percent in the past decade, with the United States accounting for nearly half of all expenditure, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said Monday. Military spending grew six percent last year alone, according to SIPRI's annual report.
(...) In 2007, 1,339 billion dollars (851 billion euros) was spent on arms and other military expenditure, corresponding to 2.5 percent of global gross domestic product, or GDP -- or 202 dollars for each of the world's 6.6 billion people.
(...) As a direct result of the increased military outlay, sales by the world's 100 leading arms producing companies (excluding in China) jumped nearly nine percent in 2006 compared to the year before to 315 billion dollars, SIPRI said. Sixty-three of the 100 top weapons firms are based in the United States and Western Europe, accounting alone for 292.3 billion dollars in sales in 2006, the last year for which SIPRI has numbers.
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The armed revolutionary has no place in modern Latin America, the Venezuelan President has declared. Catching his critics off guard, Hugo Chavez called on the Marxist rebel army in neighbouring Colombia to lay down its arms and release its hostages, declaring that guerrilla armies are now "out of place".

Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai beat Mugabe and two other candidates in the first round of voting March 29, but did not win the 50 percent plus one vote necessary to avoid a runoff, scheduled for June 27. Tsvangirai's party, foreign diplomats in Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwean and international human rights groups accuse Mugabe of unleashing violence against the opposition to ensure Mugabe wins the runoff. Zimbabwean government and party spokesmen have repeatedly denied such allegations.

Documents leaked by disgruntled army officers name 200 of them each assigned an area of the country to oversee Operation Makavhoterapapi? or Operation Where Did You Put Your Vote?, a campaign to punish those who voted for the Movement for Democratic Change, particularly in traditional Zanu (PF) strongholds, and to prevent them from voting in the June 27 presidential run-off when Mr Mugabe goes head to head with Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader.

"The points that were put forth by the Americans were more abominable than the occupation," said Jalal al Din al Saghir, a leading lawmaker from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. "We were occupied by order of the Security Council," he said, referring to the 2004 Resolution mandating a U.S. military occupation in Iraq at the head of an international coalition. "But now we are being asked to sign for our own occupation. That is why we have absolutely refused all that we have seen so far."
(...) The 58 bases would represent an expansion of the U.S. presence here. Currently, the United States operates out of about 30 major bases, not including smaller facilities such as combat outposts, according to a U.S. military map.

"It is not to the benefit of the U.S. as a major power to lessen the sovereignty of Iraq. This treaty is humiliating to the Iraqi people, and might cause an uprising against it and those who support it," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad al-Modarresi told the Iranian state-run English-language service, Press TV.

Muslim extremist women are challenging al-Qaida's refusal to include — or at least acknowledge — women in its ranks, in an emotional debate that gives rare insight into the gender conflicts lurking beneath one of the strictest strains of Islam. [ps article idiotically conflates al-qaeda and hamas]