Morning Brief, Tuesday, August 1

Crisis in the Middle East Israel's security cabinet gives a green light to a larger ground incursion into Lebanon, with Israeli troops involved in clashes on four different fronts. The intention seems to be to secure a strip of land along the border, ostensibly so that a multinational force can then come in and police ...

Crisis in the Middle East

Crisis in the Middle East

Israel's security cabinet gives a green light to a larger ground incursion into Lebanon, with Israeli troops involved in clashes on four different fronts. The intention seems to be to secure a strip of land along the border, ostensibly so that a multinational force can then come in and police it. Some European countries – like France – have demanded that a cease-fire be put in place before multinational troops are deployed, but Britain and Germany rejected today a call for an immediate cease-fire after Israeli PM Olmert said yesterday that there would be no cease-fire for several days.

Ailing Castro steps aside

Less than two weeks before his 80th birthday, Fidel Castro temporarily hands power to his brother Raul after suffering complications from intestinal surgery. Cuban exiles in Miami celebrate, though uncertainty reigns there and in Havana.  

Elsewhere

A year and a half after it was devastated by the tsunami, Indonesia's Banda Aceh province is the first to put sharia law on the books:  

Across this most religious of Indonesia’s provinces, brown uniformed policemen in black wagons enforce Shariah, or Islamic law. They haul unmarried couples into precincts and arrest people for drinking or gambling. Increasingly, many of the cases are pushed to the ultimate conclusion, public canings at mosques in front of pumped-up crowds.

A series of attacks in Baghdad kill more than 40. Several British soldiers are killed in fierce fighting in Afghanistan. North and South Korean troops exchange gunfire along the border for the first time in nearly a year. After an official outcry in Britain, the US will no longer use civilian airports in the UK to refuel US military flights. Incumbent Joseph Kabila may face a run-off in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to initial results from Sunday's poll. 

An Iranian reformer has this to say to those in the US eager to support regime change and his country's democratic movement:

[W]e [in Iran] have…learned that we have to gain our freedom ourselves, and that only we can nourish that freedom and create a political system that can sustain it. Ours is a difficult struggle; it could even be a long one. Anyone who claims to possess a golden formula for bringing freedom to Iran, and claims that all he needs is foreign cash and foreign help to put his plan into effect, is a swindler.

And last but not least, China has built an underground bunker in Shanghai able to shelter 200,000 people in the event of a nuclear attack

Carolyn O'Hara is a senior editor at Foreign Policy.

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