The Whole Delivery

Octoberfest is in full swing in Deutschland, as the nation celebrates a full two decades after the Berlin Wall collapsed : Chancellor Angela Merkel is leading the celebrations, hosted by the northern city of Bremen, where tens of thousands of people are expected to turn out. Capitalist West and communist East Germany merged on 3 October 1990 following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Sunday is also the day Germany makes the last payment on debt stemming from reparations imposed after World War I. (More to come in this edition of The Atlas.)

As of this edition of the Atlas, news is breaking of Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa getting hit by tear gas by police after protests have arisen over benefits being cut for the army and police in the nation thanks to Congress. It's being reported by "La Patilla" that Correa was not hurt but became intoxicated by the gas as the photo above indicates. Angry soldiers have taken over the capital Quito's airpot as of this time. Update: Reports are not indicating that some sources, including Hugo Chavez , are saying that a coup maybe taking place. And Correa has indicated that this small fraction of protestors are trying to cause it . In the ever growing mess that is AfPak, Pakistan has decided to block off a key NATO non-military supply route. This decision was prompted by the Pakistani government after NATO forces fired on targets in Pakistan after they crossed to border from Afghanistan . Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said on Thu...

The top international news today has clearly been the little old dictator getting ready to give his son that same position : North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has apparently named his third son, Kim Jong-un, believed to be 27, as a four-star general in the military ahead of the country's biggest political convention in three decades, making his hereditary succession plan official for the first time, Yonhap news reported. The announcement was made in the dispatch of Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the state news agency of North Korea, on the opening day of the biggest Workers' Party convention since 1980. The announcement is the first mention by name in the state's official media of Kim Jong-il's third son. Picture President Obama firing Mike Bloomberg in NYC, Menino in Boston, or Daley in Chicago. Well, that's what has transpired today in Moscow, as President Medvedev has fired the city's long time mayor Yury Luzhkov . And he appears to do it without P...

Photo from EPA Another day, another insane drone strike in Pakistan by the US : Three strikes by US drones have killed at least 28 people in the tribal region in South Waziristan. Reporting for Al Jazeera from Islamabad, Kamal Hyder said that the first attack took place near Angor Adda along the Pakistan Afghan border. "We have reports that at least seven people, who were killed in that strike, were moved to another location in the Azam Warsak region, where a funeral was arranged and that funeral also came under attack," said Hyder. It's UN "Peace Day" apparently. But this Peace Day won't make Israel sign onto the Non-Proliferation Treaty that Arab states want them to do at the International Atomic Energy Agency Annual Agency Conference in Vienna. Not thinking about peace however are extremist groups, who have seen their website traffic receive a sharp growth . Over the last two years, Cuba has been trying to grow its own food after rallying ...

Photo from AfricanNews.com The tensions are arising in Somalian again, as the government looks set to take on the Islamic forces in the South with the aid of Kenya and Ethiopia (through Germany's money) training them : The second front against Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam rebels in south and central Somalia will take place before the end of the year. Foreign-trained Somali forces will try to take over towns including the port of Kismayo which is the "key to handicap all the financial resources of the war they conducted," Sharmarke told reporters. Now the news is breaking on a suicide bomber striking the Presidential compound in the capital of Mogadishu. The Atlas will certainly keep its eye on that story. The right leaning government in power in almost half-impoverished Columbia and its rival leftist militants continue to add in their boiling tension . Conflict is also going down between Japan and China, as the Japanese continue to hold a Chinese trawler capta...

What a surprise, a corrupt election seems to be a foot in Afghanistan yet again . The sale of thousands of fake voter registration cards threatens the credibility of Afghanistan's forthcoming parliamentary elections. Al Jazeera correspondent Sue Turton, reporting from Afghanistan, said sources told her the fake cards were printed in Pakistan and were being sold in Afghanistan for just over three US dollars apiece. One of the agents selling the professionally made cards told Al Jazeera that his network has sold 1.5 million cards over the past three month, and his is just one network of many selling the fraudulent cards. About five million people are expected to vote in Saturday's elections. Stage 2 of France raising their retirement age pension plan is complete , and it really is not a happy sight at all for the proletariat. Somalia's top government officials are bickering over ratifying a new Constitution . About time UN : UNITED NATIONS: UN Secretary-Genera...

( TWD Note: "The Atlas" is the new replacement name for "The Read International", the international news and opinion blog post from The Whole Delivery. This is day one of that. ) This was a refreshing look at those in Kabul thinking more about work than war : It always strikes me when reading newspapers and watching the news, that what we hear about Afghanistan always comes from the politicians, the military, analysts and experts - everyone seems to have an opinion without ever knowing the answer. But very rarely do we hear the voices of ordinary Afghans. There is no voiceover used in this documentary. Each of the four characters did a master interview and was filmed doing what they do. It is pure and simple. The idea was to create a snapshot of life in Kabul - a human portrait of a city at work. The film is loosely structured around the course of a day, starting with the General as she gets up and goes to work, and finishing with the 95-year-old bonesetter ...