Council on Foreign Relations

- Beijing Olympics open today; world leaders arrive in Beijing.
- Heavy fighting in South Ossetia and Georgian troops seize capital.
- U.S. suspends Mauritania aid following coup.
- Musharraf hunkers down for a fight.

The highly anticipated 2008 summer Olympics open today, and world leaders are converging in Beijing. China's President Hu Jintao hosted a luncheon (Xinhua) welcoming foreign dignitaries and presented the games as an opportunity both for China and the world. China Daily's coverage left little doubt about the now much clichéd line that Beijing views the games as a coming-out party, showcasing China's achievements and casting the country as a new world power.

Whether the games will in fact come to represent this remains to be seen. A new Daily Analysis argues that China's authoritarian capitalist development model will be on display every bit as much as the sporting events themselves. Protestors have seized on the moment to pressure China on any number of issues, as this Backgrounder outlines. Reuters reports the week leading up to the games has been fraught with protests, and analysts say more could be yet to come. Perhaps even more than the protests themselves, the focus will turn to Beijing's response.

CFR.org has a wide selection of content lending context to the Olympics and China's rise -- economically, politically, diplomatically, and otherwise. A new Issue Guide provides a compendium of relevant materials.

A long-running conflict between Georgia and its breakaway province South Ossetia has rapidly devolved into heavy fighting (RFE/RL), with Georgian soldiers claiming to have seized a large part of the province's capital city. Russia's President Dmitri Medvedev called emergency meetings to address the violence (RIA Novosti), and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed Russia would respond in kind to counter what he called Georgian "aggression" (FT). The conflict threatens to stir unrest in an unwieldy series of conflicts in the Caucasus region, as summarized in a Daily Analysis from earlier this year.

- BBC has a profile of the South Ossetia region and some of the political tensions peculiar to it.

Earlier this week, the powerful Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr ordered his militia, the Mahdi Army, to lay down its arms and attempt a transition into a non-violent civic organization. ABC News looks at the possible implications for Iraqi stability and the U.S. military mission there.

SYRIA: Damascus released a well known democracy activist (al-Jazeera) who has been jailed in Syria for the last seven years.

YEMEN: A Yemeni government committee made an official field visit (Yemen Times) to parts of the country ravaged in recent fighting between military and militants, pledging to help rebuild the region.

The Daily Yomiuri reports that officials from local prefectures are increasingly bent on challenging the government of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda.

MYANMAR: Military leaders in Myanmar's capital imposed tight security restrictions (BBC) today on the twentieth anniversary of a major pro-democracy uprising.

Dawn reports the leaders of Pakistan's governing coalition have agreed to push for a confidence vote on President Pervez Musharraf that could be followed by impeachment proceedings and the reinstatement of deposed justices. Al-Jazeera says Musharraf has hunkered down and will fight the proceedings.

INDIA: India's military issued a stiff warning (Times of India) to protestors in the state of Jammu that the government will not hesitate to use force against them if they continue to block road and rail traffic.

Washington announced it will suspend more than $20 million (BBC) of non-humanitarian aid to Mauritania, following the recent military coup in the country.

KENYA: A new report on the violence that broke out following Kenya's presidential elections late last year names politicians (Daily Nation) and other senior officials accused of planning and executing acts of violence.

ZIMBABWE-UN: A UN official seeking a monitoring role in power-sharing talks in Zimbabwe was denied access (Business Day) to the country.

Osama bin Laden's former driver was sentenced to five and a half years in prison in the first U.S. military trial at Guantanamo Bay. The AP says the sentence was lighter than many analysts expected. The Los Angeles Times reports the verdict sets the stage for bigger trials.

- In a new panel discussion on PostGlobal, panelists debate whether the trial was a step forward or backward in U.S. counterterrorism efforts.

CUBA: NPR reports that Cuba's new President Raul Castro may indeed be bent on bringing economic reform in the Communist state, but that the transition might not be an easy one economically for the Cuban people.

The Democratic Party released a draft of its platform (PDF) on Thursday. The fifty-four page document includes sections on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a new U.S.-Pakistan partnership, homeland security, and nuclear non-proliferation, among other foreign policy topics. Much of the agenda is consistent with Sen. Barack Obama's foreign policy plan, including the goal of "responsibly redeploying our combat forces from Iraq and refocusing them on urgent missions."

In a statement on the tenth anniversary of bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the attacks "proved the vulnerability of U.S. installations overseas, and demonstrated -- to any that needed further evidence -- that al-Qaeda was a well-funded, organized and treacherous terrorist organization determined to kill Americans." He said the U.S. response at the time was "wholly inadequate."

OpenSecrets looks the ties of both candidates to oil companies.

In Friday's roundup: The opening of the Beijing Olympics; the mystery behind the 2001 anthrax deaths; and Mauritania's coup.