Government warns us to be worried that something might happen sometime to someone, they're pretty sure. So we should all be on the lookout for...something. I personally think Ashcroft meant that we're about to be invaded by midget Taliban wearing masks; if I see any I'm planning to hit them with a shovel.

Someone looked at the US government documents relating to the coup that deposed the Afghan king we're trying to put back. It seems we didn't think much of him and, oh yeah, had advanced information of the coup (a year in advance).

One of the places the US military is now fighting Al Qaeda is in the Philippines.

And this week we've started training Nicaraguan military officers at the School of the Americas, or whatever it's calling itself this week (you remember how they solved the problem of the place's reputation for training torturers and death-squad leaders by changing its name? if not, there's an article on it in the www.guardian.co.uk/columnists, which compares it with bin Laden's training camps).