October 20, 2009: The government is taking in half the oil and gas revenue this year ($20 billion) as they did last year ($40 billion.) That means cuts in government spending, higher unemployment and more public unhappiness. The drop in global oil prices is the main culprit. Most embarrassing to the government has been the militancy of thousands of maimed military and police veterans, who are demanding better care and compensation. Several hundred of these veterans have been demonstrating in the capital, and the police have been reluctant to act against their injured brethren. But there have been other demonstrations, by non-veterans, against lack of housing and jobs, which the cops have cracked down on.

Algerian terrorists have been accused of conspiring with a French nuclear physicist (who worked with CERN and the Hadron collider project) to plan and carry out terror attacks in France. French intelligence intercepted and decrypted emails exchanged between the physicist and the Algerian terrorists. This was big news because of the CERN connection and the Algerian ancestry of the physicist. But otherwise, it was fairly typical of the many attacks that are always being planned in this fashion, but rarely get carried out.

October 19, 2009: Some 500 kilometers southwest of the capital, troops caught up with senior terrorist leader, Nouh Abu Qatada al Salafi, and killed him.

October 17, 2009: East of the capital, army search teams found and destroyed two terrorist camps, killing four Islamic terrorists in the process.

October 9, 2009: About a thousand kilometers southwest of the capital, police caught up with several vehicles crossing the desert carrying Islamic terrorists and their weapons. Ten terrorists and three police were killed when the terrorists stopped near the world's largest sand dune (the "Great Erg") and made a stand. They all died, and three turned out to be foreigners.