BOSTON — Nobody who is interested in the fate of the American enterprise in Afghanistan should fail to read George Packer’s illuminating profile of Richard Holbrooke in the Sept. 28 issue of the New Yorker. Holbrooke is the extremely talented, irascible, nakedly ambitious, and controversial diplomat whom President Obama has chosen as his top civilian envoy to the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater.

NEW DELHI, India — Deep in the jungles of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, commandos from the police force's elite “Cobra” division launched a devastating surprise attack on an encampment of Maoist rebels last week.

LONDON, United Kingdom — Three British men connected to Al Qaeda were convicted Monday of masterminding a massive terrorism plot that could have resulted in thousands of deaths in fiery explosions over the Atlantic. Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Tanvir Hussain and Assad Sarwar had been accused of planning to blow up as many as nine commercial airliners en route from Britain to America in the summer of 2006.

ISLAMABAD — Soon after the Supreme Court had declared former President Pervez Musharraf’s November 2007 emergency rule to be illegal, Pakistani students, doctors, engineers and lawyers went online to express their delight or annoyance. One social networking website that brimmed with these voices, displaying them within 140 characters or less, was Twitter. “The nation should promise never to support unconstitutional steps in future!” said one ‘tweet.’