Condi Rice is so five minutes ago. As we write this, the news is coming in fast and furious from Iraq:

In an ominous turn, kidnappers seized 13 foreign hostages and threatened to burn three Japanese captives alive if Tokyo did not withdraw its troops.....TV pictures aired in the Middle East by the Al-Jazeera satellite network and rebroadcast during prime time in Japan showed the three Japanese hostages - two aid workers and a journalist - wide-eyed and moaning in terror as their black-clad captors held knives to their throats, shouting God is Great in Arabic.

Two Arab aid workers from Jerusalem - one who had once lived in Georgia - were abducted in a separate incident, and a Syrian-born Canadian humanitarian aid worker for the International Rescue Committee was taken hostage Wednesday by a local militia in Najaf. Eight South Korean Christian missionaries were seized by gunmen outside Baghdad. Seven were freed after one of them escaped, the Foreign Ministry in Seoul said.

The radical Shi'ite Militia has seized control of two cities in the south:

In the south, the al-Sadr's al-Mahdi Army militia had full control in the cities of Kut and Kufa and in the central part of Najaf. Police in the cities have abandoned their stations or stood aside as the gunmen roam the streets.

The U.S. death toll is at 40 for this week alone, six in the past 48 hours. Friday is the first anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Al Jazeera's headline story: Fierce Falluja fighting recalls Vietnam.