Very shortly following the bombing of the Golden Mosque the cable news stations showed a brief video clip of a would-be suicide car bomber being led away by Iraqi police following a failed attempt to bomb another "holy shrine/Mosque" in Iraq.

Unfortunately, I forgot the name of the Mosque and have been unable to find any printed reports using Internet searches. Can anyone provide a source or name?

TIA

[EDIT: The holy nature of the targeted Mosque and the timing of the attack are too coincidental. Startegically we can surmise the following. By staging another attack so quickly after the first:

1). It would not (or, so the terrorists would believe) have given the authorities sufficient time to bolster defenses around other holy sites.

2). A second attack successful attack may have been too powerful a blow for Iraq to have averted a full-scale civil war.

Since the terrorist driver was not injured and was shown handcuffed and being taken into custody by the Iraqi police, the lack of information regarding this individual is very unusual.]

On a more positive note

"Iraqi Interior Minister Says He Knows Who Abducted Kidnapped Journalist"
Feb. 27, 2006

A top Iraqi official tells ABC News that he believes Jill Carroll is alive and that he believes she will be released, even though the latest deadline for the kidnapped journalist has passed with no news of her fate.

...

"We know his name and address, and we are following up on him as well as the Americans," Zubaidi said. "I think she is still alive."

The minister said the problem was that authorities don't know where Carroll was being held, and that the original kidnappers may have sold her to a more radical group. Plus, he said, their demands could change.

"They want to get more and more," he said. "The release of women, the release of some bad guys from the terrorists and maybe at the end they will need money." ...

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1666314&page=1

[This is a holy war against the decadent West?]

There has not been a great deal of discussion about this topic in the press. It is my impression that the U.S. is willing to bide time to see how the situation develops. This excerpt seems to express some progress:

"Israel argues that the swearing in of the legislature means Hamas now controls the Palestinian Authority, but the United States and the quartet [United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations] insist that the authority's president, Mahmoud Abbas, is still running a caretaker government that must be supported, and that any funds cutoff should only take place once Hamas forms a government, which may not happen until the end of March."

. . .

"The quartet and Israel agree that humanitarian aid should continue to the Palestinians, including money spent by United Nations organizations." …
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/internation...5094&partner=homepage




I must admit that I did find the following excerpt from this piece rather amusing:

"If a consensus can be built, then he [Blair] would support it.

"I don't know what the consensus building will produce.

"But if it produced a result where the primacy of the House of Commons were clear, and a way forward on composition was clear, then we would certainly not stand in the way, indeed we would encourage reform along those lines".

[In other words we have no idea who, how, what or why; but if doesn't compromise our political monopoly, then sure, why not?]

Coverage still bubbles on here, if you watch BBC News 24 and read the broadsheets, but it has disappeared of the radar as regards normal radio and TV news bulletins.

It is interesting to note the change in the coverage of the Philippines by the BBC since the Boxing Day Tsumnai. It may have passed you by, just as it did many here, that in late November/early December 2004 the same part of the Luzon coast was hit by a series of Typhoons and tropical storms, three in as many weeks, and this resulted in about 2400 deaths, many when Dingalan was destroyed by a mudslide. Across the whole of the BBC you could have counted the reports on the fingers of one hand. Then came the Tsunami (which didn't affect the Philippines), of which the was significant coverage but mainly from tourist locations. Thus I and many others wrote and called on the BBC to address this matter given the large Filippino population now in the UK. This they appear to have done. However this is scene setting as I assume you were aluding to the attempted coup.

Firstly reports of attempted coups are to a degree business as usual in the Philippines, and this recent one was not unexpected given that this weekend marked the 20th anniversery of the toppling of Marcos. There are still many within the older generation in the Philippines who hanker after Marcos claiming it to be some sort of golden age, and this helps to fuel this instability.

Also there is the fact that public uprisings have deposed two Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and Joseph Estrada in 2001, thus what you get is invididuals seeking power and picking moments of instability in the hope that they will get popular support. At present in addition to the Marocs Anniversary, there is some disquiet with President Gloria Arroyo over supposed corruption in the last elections.

Corruption is rife in the Philippine political system, and it is efforts to stamp it out that are behind some of the attempted coups, as individuals see their illicit income being denied them.

On the whole I would suggest that the Philippines is relatively stable and has managed to hang on to its democracy over the past 20years. The deposing of Estrada in 2001 was over corruption but he was replaced in a democratic manner. For the bulk of the population life goes on as normal.

Iraqi forces capture Zarqawi aide
Mon Feb 27, 10:02 AM ET

“BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi Interior Ministry forces have captured a senior aide to al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Iraqi state television said on Monday.

“Iraqiya named the man as Abu Farouq and said he was captured with five others in the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of the capital.”

[Why is it every time they find a terrorist it is in a “Sunni insurgent stronghold”? I wonder: Is there a connection?]

“It said Abu Farouq al-Suri, previously unknown to the media, was captured by the Wolf Brigade, one of several counter-insurgency units operating within the Shi'ite-run Interior Ministry but accused by Sunnis of targeting civilians in their community.”

[DEF: Targeting - Searching for terrorists (by definition all these terrorists are civilians) where you know they are hiding and capturing them. Those ruthless Shi'ites!]

“The word Suri is Arabic for Syrian, indicating that the captured man may have come from Iraq's western neighbor.”

[A foreign terrorist in Sunni dominated areas of Iraq: How odd.]
…