The last two days have seen the deadliest attacks in 24 years between Israel and its neighbors with Israel bombing Lebanon two days in a row after the kidnapping of two of its soldiers by Hezbollah. Today it bombed the Beirut airport.

President Bush pledged to work with Israel, criticizing Hezbollah for thwarting efforts for peace in the Middle East.

"My attitude is this: there are a group of terrorists who want to stop the advance of peace," he said at a news conference in Germany. "The soldiers need to be returned."

Reactions from other Arab countries:

Moderate Arab governments reacted with relative restraint, apparently reflecting a sentiment in Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that Hezbollah - and by implication its top ally, Syria - had started the fight with Israel.

I support Israel in this. I'm sure others will disagree. Have at it, but keep it civil and any anti-semitic comments will be deleted.

Update: First person account from a Wall St Journal reporter (free link) who was on a train next to one of those bombed.

The news from Bombay is grim as the death count from the mass transit bombings now stands at 163 with more than 400 injured.

Eight bombs hit Bombay's commuter rail network during rush hour Tuesday evening, killing at least 147 people and wounding more than 400 in what authorities called a well-coordinated terrorist attack.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility in the bombings, which came in quick succession - a common tactic employed by Kashmiri militants. The blasts came hours after a series of grenade attacks by Islamic extremists killed eight people in the main city of India's part of Kashmir.

U.S. officials say the attacks "were likely part of the sectarian violence over Kashmir."

This could be the best news I've read all day. Indonesia is about to agree to a prisoner exchange treaty with Australia that might allow Schapelle Corby to finish serving her 20 year jail sentence for importing 9 pounds of marijuana into Bali, a crime she denied committing, in her native Australia. Last May, Bali said a transfer would not be considered.

It's not a "go" yet. First, the transfer treaty would have to be retroactive and cover past offenses. It's not clear that it will. Second, Schapelle might prefer to do her time in Bali.

Bump and Update: Just in from Newsweek: A new poll shows that Europeans really, really don't like Bush.

A Harris Interactive/Financial Times survey released Monday found that 36 percent of Europeans view the United States as the world's greatest threat to "global stability." By comparison, 30 percent of those polled named Iran as the biggest threat, while 18 percent named China.

In Austria, that unpopularity is particularly acute: a recent poll by the Vienna-based News magazine found that 72 percent of those surveyed found Bush to be unlikable and a danger to world peace.

Shorter version: Bush can't escape his unpopularity by running off to Europe.

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Original Post:
Bush Protests in Austria:

From Austrian tv/radio, here's the video of Bush protesters in Austria. Cindy Sheehan is front and center. At the end, there's a flag burning. [hat tip Scribe]

Anderson Cooper 360 featured a long segment on how the Chinese are taking and selling organs from prisoners condemned to death. Doctors have testified at hearings that sometimes the prisoners are still alive. Americans and other foreigners who can't get an organ in time from being on a donor list are flying to China to receive the organs, justifying their decision by saying they aren't told anything about the organ donor, so they don't know their new liver, kidney or eyes, whatever the case may be, came from a person who was killed in order that the organ be harvested and sold.

CNN referred to the "death vans" I wrote about here, which are used both to execute the prisoner by lethal injection and then, within 15 minutes, take their organs.

In an editorial Wednesday, a Chinese newspaper defends its death penalty and organ harvesting program.

I can't read German, but a lawyer who reads TalkLeft can. This just in today. The German high court has sharply limited data-mining as an invasion of citizen privacy. His translation of the news article, with his explanation in brackets:

The Federal Constitutional Court [located in Karlsruhe, their highest court] has drastically limited the possibilities and opportunities for dragnet/grid/screening searches (data-mining) and thereby rolled back limitations on people's civil liberties in the fight against Terror.

In a decision made public today, the justices stated that foreign policy tensions or a collective threat level such as after the attacks of 9/11/01 do not suffice to permit the dragnet/grid/screen searches. In that connection [i.e., post 9/11] in Nordrhein-Westfalen the data pertaining to more than five million men were reviewed/scrutinized in detail. The justices found that officials [seeking to do data-mining] must have/put forward concrete grounds to believe there will be foreseeable attacks in Germany. While electronic/data privacy advocates and politicians from the Greens, FDP and Left Party greeted the decision, the Bavarian Interior Minister Beckstein called it a black day for the War on Terror.

Original news item (Bavarian Radio):
17:00 Uhr: Karlsruhe schränkt Möglichkeiten der Rasterfahndung ein

Anybody home? This is some scary Iran news from the British paper the Herald:

THE US is updating contingency plans for a non-nuclear strike to cripple Iran's atomic weapon programme if international diplomacy fails, Pentagon sources have confirmed. Strategists are understood to have presented two options for pinpoint strikes using B2 bombers flying directly from bases in Missouri, Guam in the Pacific and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

The main plan calls for a rolling, five-day bombing campaign against 400 key targets in Iran, including 24 nuclear-related sites, 14 military airfields and radar installations, and Revolutionary Guard headquarters.ulf.

Larisa at Raw Story reports that two aircraft carriers, the USS Abraham Lincoln and the USS Enterprise are headed to the Middle East and Western Pacific. The USS Ronald Reagan is positioned in the Gulf.

Larisa reports the U.S. could be gearing up for air strikes in Iran, possibly in June.

President Bush has decided to ignore the 18 page letter (available here pdf) from Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad containing settlement options for the nuclear weapons issue, calling it "a ploy."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent an unexpected letter to President Bush on Monday, in what was seen as an overture for direct talks about Tehran's nuclear program, but U.S. officials dismissed the missive as an eleventh-hour ploy to forestall punitive action by the United Nations.

The letter is thought to be the first direct communication between the two countries' leaders since Iranian militants overthrew the shah and took Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in 1979. Diplomats hoped the letter signaled a new willingness on Iran's part to address the standoff over its uranium enrichment program, which the Islamic Republic says is for peaceful energy purposes, but which much of the West suspects is a cover for trying to build nuclear weapons.

The Council of Foreign Relations notes:

Bush is elevating Iran into a crisis situation. But there is no crisis. Josh Marshall calls it correctly.

The only crisis with Iran is the crisis with the president's public approval ratings. Period. End of story. The Iranians are years, probably as long as a decade away, and possibly even longer from creating even a limited yield nuclear weapon. Ergo, the only reason to ramp up a confrontation now is to help the president's poll numbers.....The period of peril the country is entering into isn't tied to an Iranian bomb. It turns on how far a desperate president will go to avoid losing control of Congress.

[Via Atrios.] As Juan Cole reports, the IAEA report (pdf) released Friday found no proof of an Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program. Iran has promised to cooperate with weapons inspectors and insists it is only acquiring uranium for nuclear power, not nuclear bombs.

The Mexican Congress has passed legislation decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs

Under the legislation, police will not penalize people for possessing up to 5 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of opium, 25 milligrams of heroin or 500 milligrams of cocaine. People caught with larger quantities of drugs will be treated as narcotics dealers and face increased jail terms under the plan.

...The object of this law is to not put consumers in jail, but rather those who sell and poison," said Sen. Jorge Zermeno of the ruling National Action Party.

Also decriminalized: small amounts of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines and peyote.

Smart move. The U.S. should take a look at doing the same. For those of you fluent in Spanish, here is the text of the new law.

The Sunday Times (UK) reports if the U.S. or Britain attack Iran's nuclear sites, they have an army of 40,000 suicide bombers ready to take revenge:

IRAN has formed battalions of suicide bombers to strike at British and American targets if the nation's nuclear sites are attacked. According to Iranian officials, 40,000 trained suicide bombers are ready for action.

The group is called "Special Unit of Martyr Seekers in the Revolutionary Guards."