Germany

According to U.S. officials, Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, wants to set up a new intelligence service to better contend with the mafia, drug dealers, arms brokers, slave traders, and underground guerrillas in the region. A number of German political leaders, who are opposed to the proliferation of spies, are concerned about what would be Germany's fourth spy agency, after the German Federal Intelligence Service, the Federal Office for Constitutional Protection (a counterspy agency) and the Military Counterintelligence Service.

Russia

Russian military forces recently conducted an airborne forces exercise designed to test paratrooper readiness to deal with a NATO attack. American officials say the exercise was similar to other recent military war games in that Russian forces were quickly forced to resort to using nuclear weapons against the invading armies. Economic problems have severely weakened Russia's conventional military forces in recent years. As a result, the military has emphasized a greater reliance on nuclear weaponry, especially tactical nuclear forces, for its defense.

Middle East

According to the Stratfor intelligence service, mounting violence between Israel and the Palestinians has heightened tensions across the Middle East, but the threat of a full-scale Israeli invasion of the Palestinian territories evokes a much greater fear: namely the potential for a new Arab-Israeli war. However, right now all of Israel's Arab neighbors are too restricted by their limited military capabilities and economic and political concerns to launch an offensive. Moreover, the United States is bolstering its own involvement in the region to reassure Israel and keep it from launching an attack on Arab states.

Two concerns could tip the balance in favor of regional conflict. First is the potential for Israel to launch first strikes. Israel would attack Syria, Iraq and possibly even Egypt if it thought the Arab states were preparing an offensive. Second, a threatened regime in Jordan could prove dangerous for the region. Palestinians already make up about half of Jordan's 5 million inhabitants, including both refugees and citizens of Palestinian descent. An influx of Palestinian refugees, prompted by an Israeli invasion of the West Bank, would create an immediate humanitarian crisis. It would also trigger a political and military crisis that could threaten young King Abdullah. In the early 1970s, his father, King Hussein, faced similar difficulties after Palestinian refugees in Jordan began mobilizing guerrilla forces to challenge Israel. A repeat of this uprising, known as Black September, could destabilize the entire country, offering Iraq an opportunity to infiltrate more of its forces into Jordan.

Rape

The U.S. Department of Justice reports more than 19,000 people were victims of in-school rape (defined as occurring "inside school building or on school property") in 1999, 58% more than the 12,000 similar rapes documented for 1994. Sixty-seven percent of all of the victims are children under age 18, and of these, 34% are under age 12. A recent survey of high-school graduates finds that 17.7% of males and 82.2% of females claim that, while students, they were sexually harassed by faculty or staff. Another 13.5% say they "engaged in sexual intercourse with a teacher." After reviewing these numbers, the independent news service WorldNetDaily opines, "School as a sex-assault war zone follows roughly 40 years of school 'sex education,' unleashed in the early 1960s when classrooms became 'eroticized.' Rapes and sex assaults in schools—once a place of trust and safety—are now objective measures of a failed sexual worldview and of fetid social decay."

Disease

A report by three British aid agencies says 41 percent of children in the rebel-held territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo die of malaria, measles or malnutrition before their first birthday.