The World

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1 | Moscow

Terror in the Airport

A suicide bomber set off an explosion in the international-arrivals section of Moscow's busiest airport Jan. 24, killing 35 people and wounding up to 180 others. Though no one took immediate responsibility for the Domodedovo airport bombing, authorities suspect it was carried out by Islamist separatists from Russia's restive North Caucasus region, which includes the once insurgency-ravaged republic of Chechnya. Chechen fighters attacked the same airport in 2004, and two women from Dagestan, adjacent to Chechnya, bombed a Moscow subway station last year. In the wake of the latest attack, President Dmitri Medvedev blamed airport and security authorities for not responding to warnings of an imminent strike, which Russian media outlets say may have been raised as much as a week in advance.

2 | New York

Life Sentence For Gitmo Detainee

Ahmed Ghailani, the first Guantánamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his role in the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa. Upon sentencing Ghailani, who was convicted Nov. 17 of conspiracy to destroy government buildings, the judge said anything Ghailani suffered at the hands of the CIA and other interrogators--he was allegedly tortured--"pales in comparison to the suffering and the horror" he caused. The 1998 attacks in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi killed 224 people and wounded thousands more.

3 | Afghanistan

New Parliament Convenes

Four months after his parliamentary elections, President Hamid Karzai finally swore in a new parliament. Acrimony and investigations of voter fraud have followed the poll results, and Karzai criticized the international community for meddling in the elections and undermining his government's legitimacy. He renewed a pledge to rid Afghanistan of private security firms and continues to complain about increasing civilian casualties.

4 | Jerusalem

Leaked Docs Show Broad Concessions

Confidential documents detailing a decade of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations were aired by al-Jazeera, portraying a desperate Palestinian Authority willing to concede ground on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as compromise on the right of return for refugees. The revelations could threaten the PA's hold on power in the West Bank, which it controls despite losing a 2006 election to Hamas, the Islamists now controlling Gaza.

5 | London

Study Warns of Global Food Crisis

The "global food system [is] living outside its means," said an extensive U.K. government-sponsored report compiled over two years with the assistance of 400 experts in 35 countries. The report, which attempts to calculate the future sustainability of the world's food supply, calls for urgent government action to trim waste, liberalize global trade laws and aid the nearly 2 billion undernourished people in the world.

Worst-case increases in food prices by 2050 owing to climate and other factors

[The following text appears within a chart. Please see hardcopy or PDF for actual chart.]

CLIMATE EFFECT

ECONOMIC EFFECT

MAIZE