Armed Forces

The people of Villanueva said they'd had enough. Men in cowboy hats, women with hand-scrawled signs, children on bikes -- they gathered outside town and blocked the main interstate highway. "If you can't do it, quit!" they told their police force. They demanded that the army take over. The army rolled into this town in Zacatecas state last month and ordered the police to stand down and surrender their weapons. They did. Things only got worse.

Afghanistan's defense minister warned Thursday that the Obama administration's proposed changes in U.S. war strategy risk undermining Kabul's civilian government because they appear to scale back U.S. goals in the country. Abdul Rahim Wardak said he was troubled by recent comments from senior U.S. officials that they were "lowering expectations" in Afghanistan in order to set more "obtainable goals," saying such language recalls memories of the U.S.

Firefighters searching the headquarters compound of Bangladesh's border guards Friday after a two-day mutiny uncovered the bodies of dozens of senior officers dumped into shallow graves and sewers. By nightfall, 44 bodies had been recovered, including that of Maj. Gen. Shakil Ahmed, the commander of the guards, bringing the confirmed death toll to 66, fire official Mizanur Rahman said. Dozens more officers were missing.

More than 1,000 border guards were charged Sunday with murder and arson in an uprising that left at least 148 people dead or missing, most of them army officers whose bodies were hurriedly dumped by the mutineers. The details of what the prime minister called "a planned massacre" emerged after the government withdrew its promise of amnesty to the paramilitary force and sought to repair its increasingly tense relations with the military.

Bangladeshi police said Tuesday that they had arrested the suspected ringleader of an insurrection by border guards, an attack the prime minister cited as proof of "a conspiracy" against her government. The army continued to search for more than 1,000 border guards who fled after last week's mutiny at their headquarters in Dhaka, in which the guards ambushed their commanding officers, leaving at least 69 people dead.

Layoff notices, bank failures and plummeting stock markets seem to fill every minute of our newscasts and every corner of our consciences. What a time to be selling a book with this cheery thesis: The disastrous war in Iraq probably must continue to prevent further disaster. You'd have to be hopelessly out of touch, a tad delusional -- or a crackerjack journalist on a mission -- to come out with a winner like that, as Thomas E. Ricks has.

Two British military personnel were killed and four people were seriously wounded in a shooting at an army base in Northern Ireland, police said Saturday. "The two fatalities as I understand it are military personnel," a police spokeswoman said, adding that two of the wounded were also from the army. The shooting at the Massereene base near the town of Antrim followed reports that British special forces were back in the province gathering intelligence on dissident republicans.

Military prosecutors Tuesday filed involuntary manslaughter charges against a Ft. Lewis, Wash., soldier in the late-night, drug-related death of a 16-year-old girl -- a case that has prompted strict new policies on civilian access to the base. Pvt. Timothy E. Bennitt, a 19-year-old heavy equipment operator who had been dating the girl, also was charged with wrongful use and distribution of controlled substances and conspiracy.

Pakistani authorities today placed opposition leader Nawaz Sharif under house arrest, a day after putting the armed forces on alert amid an escalating power struggle with former allies. U.S. diplomatic efforts to defuse the political crisis intensified as the Pakistani government pledged anew to block a massive opposition rally in the capital on Monday.