Depressing news from Iraq today, where more than 100 people have been killed in an enormous suicide bombing in Baghdad and dozens more in other attacks in and around the city. The onslaught has been claimed by the al-Qaida in Iraq group led by the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as the opening of a nationwide suicide bombing campaign to avenge a US and Iraqi military offensive against rebels. We're trying to contact our correspondent Rory Carroll in Baghdad for an audio report.
Later today Tony Blair, George Bush and other world leaders will address the UN summit in New York. Hopes of meaningful progress on issues of security, poverty and development have been muted by the decision to agree a watered down final declaration that omitted every issue on which there was disagreement.
Elsewhere we'll have a view from Henry McDonald in Belfast on the significance of Peter Hain's declaration that the government no longer recognises the UVF's 11-year ceasefire after loyalist paramilitaries joined four days of loyalist rioting rioting in the city.
Here on Newsblog the Iranian blogger Hossein Derakshan has written about internet censorship in the Islamic Republic. And in an alcohol-related double header Chris Borg will be flicking through the new Good Beer Guide, while Ros Taylor ponders why Andrew Flintoff's all-night bender is viewed indulgently as understandable high spirits in the very same newspapers that daily fill their pages with horrified tales of binge drinking in Britain's city centres.
