Walls

They are the sullen architecture of the "surge," gray armies shrinking the horizon. Baghdad is a city of blast walls, towering maze-like from the Tigris to the battered, seething neighborhoods of Shula and Sadr City. Concrete sentinels of last year's troop buildup, they seal and sequester. They absorb explosions from car bombs, they bottle up bad guys.

It can be a curse, the neighbors discovered, to move onto the well-heeled, palm-festooned San Clemente lane next to Richard Nixon's former home. Christopher Arndt and Maureen Doyle despised what local historians describe as the former Western White House's security wall, which bisects their backyard. The couple whittled a door into the red-tile-capped barrier to reach the rest of their property. Their next-door neighbor, Richard Osman, loathed the wall too.

The path between the Greek and Turkish sides of Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus, was barricaded by plastic and metal screens, and prospects for reconciliation were uncertain. The Greek Cypriot government this week demolished the 12-foot-high concrete wall that stretched across Ledra Street but said the crossing would not be opened unless Turkey removed soldiers from the area.

A U.S. military brigade is constructing a 3-mile-long concrete wall to cut off one of the capital's most restive Sunni Arab districts from the Shiite Muslim neighborhoods that surround it, raising concern about the further Balkanization of Iraq's most populous and violent city. U.S.

In the increasingly curious legal battle over a 4-foot-high retaining wall along the U.S.-Canada border, the retired owners -- Herbert and Shirley-Ann Leu of Blaine, Wash. -- appear to have won the first round. The head of the agency attempting to tear down the wall was fired last week by President Bush. Dennis Schornack, however, is fighting his termination in federal court, arguing that the White House has no firing authority over the agency.

Mexico called on the United States to alter a plan to expand border fences designed to stem illegal immigration, saying the barriers would threaten migratory species that roam freely across the frontier.

Nearly a year after Congress passed legislation calling for the construction of 700 miles of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, about 15 miles have been built, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Some Republicans and anti-illegal immigration groups have recently criticized the lack of progress, but Homeland Security, which had committed to putting up 70 miles of fencing by Sept.

seattle -- A federal judge Friday upheld President Bush's firing of a border official who tried to force a retired Washington state couple to tear down a retaining wall behind their home along the U.S.-Canadian border. Border official Dennis Schornack, whom Bush fired in July, challenged the termination, arguing that the White House has no authority over the International Boundary Commission, or IBC, a binational treaty organization that maintains the U.S.-Canadian border.

Betty Perez and John Odgers typically don't share the same canoe -- or much else. She's an Earth mother-type who used to buy health food for an Austin cooperative and now cultivates native plants. He's a former banker turned Minuteman whose post-retirement pursuits include tracking illegal immigrants and packing heat. But Perez and Odgers do have one thing in common: a deep love for the majestic winged creatures that live along the wild banks of the Rio Grande.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Monday invoked his power to bypass certain laws to restart construction of about seven miles of fence on the Arizona-Mexico border. Chertoff's action allows construction to go forward in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. Work was suspended Oct. 10, when a federal district judge ordered a delay in construction. The judge said the U.S. did not fully study the environmental impact of the fence.