By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

On the morning of Oct. 20, as humanitarian aid worker Gayle Williams walked to work in Kabul, Afghanistan, two men on a motorcycle approached and shot her multiple times before speeding off. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the assassination of the 34-year-old British citizen from South Africa.

Taliban spokesman Zaibullah Mujahid told The Associated Press that his group killed Williams because she "came to Afghanistan to teach Christianity to the people of Afghanistan." Williams' organization, Serving Emergency Relief and Vocational Enterprises (SERVE), denied the charge. In a message on SERVE's Web site, the organization noted that Williams had worked for nearly two years in Kandahar and Kabul directing projects designed to integrate disabled Afghans into the mainstream educational system. SERVE has a long history of working with the needy and with refugees in Afghanistan. The organization was founded in 1972 to help famine victims in Ghor province, and began to work with Afghan refugees in Pakistan in 1980. Since 1992, the group has focused on work inside Afghanistan, providing assistance to refugees returning to Afghanistan and vocational training for the disabled.

Read more...

By George Friedman

In 1989, the global system pivoted when the Soviet Union retreated from Eastern Europe and began the process of disintegration that culminated in its collapse. In 2001, the system pivoted again when al Qaeda attacked targets in the United States on Sept. 11, triggering a conflict that defined the international system until the summer of 2008. The pivot of 2008 turned on two dates, Aug. 7 and Oct. 11.

On Aug. 7, Georgian troops attacked the country's breakaway region of South Ossetia. On Aug. 8, Russian troops responded by invading Georgia. The Western response was primarily rhetorical. On the weekend of Oct. 11, the G-7 met in Washington to plan a joint response to the global financial crisis. Rather than defining a joint plan, the decision - by default - was that each nation would act to save its own financial system with a series of broadly agreed upon guidelines.

Read more...