In France this week, we’ve seen a local story spread round the world in flaming images. On Sunday, two teenage boys in the impoverished Parisian suburb of Villiers-le-Bel were killed when the small motorbike they were riding collided with a police car. The incident sparked local riots among youth who blamed police for the teens’ deaths. (An official investigation into the collision is ongoing.)

Whatever the real cause of the accident, it evoked echoes of the national riots that spread across almost 300 similarly economically depressed towns and suburbs throughout the country-and fears that something similar could happen again.  Back in October 2005, two teenage boys were electrocuted when they sought refuge from police in a power sub-station in Clichy-sous-Bois, another downscale suburb of Paris with large minority populations. That incident resulted in 10,000 torched cars and 300 torched buildings over three long weeks. The tough-talking Interior Minister in charge of law and order then, Nicolas Sarkozy, is now president.

One day in May this year, I was visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam with a friend from Germany. The director of the museum, Hans Westra, is a long-time family friend. He gave us a short private tour of the secret annex where Anne Frank lived for 25 months before being captured by the Germans and sent off to Auschwitz. As he showed us the pantry of the house, which is normally closed to the public, Westra pointed out of the window, towards a gigantic chestnut tree sitting on the back of the building. ‘That tree will have to go soon,’ he said. ‘It’s sick. Come the day of the felling, I reckon there will be a lot of media attention.’

Those of us who've had the misfortune of sitting through one of Hugo Chavez' interminable diatribes quietly savored the moment during last week's Ibero-American summit when Spain's King Juan Carlos bluntly asked the Venezuelan president "Why don't you shut up?"

The royal outburst occurred on the final day of the international parley in the Chilean capital of Santiago, at a point when Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was politely asking his South American counterpart to cease referring to Zapatero's right-wing predecessor Jose Maria Aznar as a "fascist." True to form, Chavez kept talking through Zapatero's comments even though the Venezuelan leader's microphone was turned off--at which point the usually courtly monarch could no longer contain himself and uttered the words so many of us in Latin America's foreign press corps have been longing to hear.

Reporter Mike Elkin writes from Spain:

 In Spain there are both written and unwritten rules that prohibit any criticism or mocking of the Spanish monarchy, evident in Tuesday’s court decision to fine two employees at El Jueves magazine – similar to Mad magazine – for slandering Prince Felipe. This summer the cover of El Jueves decided to make fun of the government’s plan to subsidize new parents with 2,500 euros per child. The illustration showed a caricature of Felipe having sex with wife Letizia and saying, "Have you heard? If you get pregnant, this will be the closest thing to work I’ve ever done!"

It was not the most outrageous Jueves cover, but a judge ordered the magazine’s recall, which of course ensured that everyone in Spain saw it instead of the magazine’s usual staple of teenage boys. The court, enforcing a law specifically designed to protect the monarchy’s honor, fined the Jueves cover writer and illustrator 3,000 euros each for deliberate slander against the monarchy (they are appealing). In a way, however, the cover illustrates a growing anti-monarchical feeling in Spain. Pro-republic marches seem to be taking place more frequently and it’s unlikely that a future King Felipe will enjoy the same unflappable sway over Spaniards that his father, King Juan Carlos, does now.

In most countries, soldiers returning from being held hostage in enemy territory would probably be treated as national heroes. Not so in Turkey. Last Monday, eight Turkish soldiers kidnapped in an Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) ambush on Oct 21st were released unconditionally by their captors. But the soldiers – six privates and two non-commissioned officers - returned to their homeland to face accusations of betraying their motherland. Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said on Monday that was “not entirely happy” about the soldiers' release – adding that they were still being questioned by Turkish military interrogators about their ordeal. "No member of the Turkish armed forces should have found themselves in such a situation," Sahin told an audience at Ankara University. “As a Turkish citizen I cannot accept the fact that they went with the terrorists that night. Our soldier is prepared to die if necessary when he is protecting the country." Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Çiçek yesterday denied telling ministerial colleagues that two of the kidnapped soldiers had PKK sympathies and could have gone over voluntarily.

The story says a lot about the way Turkey works – and how, despite years of EU-inspired reforms, the country has still retained many of the habits of mind formed during years of military dictatorship.

There are a lot of other stories that have been in the forefront of the news in Japan this week. But there's another one that hasn't gotten the airtime it deserves – even though it might be the most important of all.

It's about Yuriko Koike, Japan's first female Defense Minister, who abruptly quit in August just weeks after her appointment to the job. At the time she was harshly criticized for the seemingly arbitrary actions that precipitated her departure. Yet now events have dramatically vindicated her move, in ways that suggest that her 55-day tenure may end up being remembered as a remarkable achievement. What did she do? Simple - she fired her deputy, the top-ranking civil servant Takemasa Moriya. The problem was that she didn't really explain it very well. All she said was that he'd been in his job for much too long (twice the regular two-year term). He was so entrenched, as a matter of fact, that people gave him the nickname "the Emperor." As soon as Koike made her announcement, the 62-year old veteran bureaucratic infighter immediately started a campaign of resistance, going so far as to petition Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But Koike stuck to her guns. Moriya headed off into retirement, but soon his boss was also forced to leave office under circumstances that have never really been clear. On the surface of things her motives seemed flimsy. Though acknowledging that she had the legal power to decide his removal, critics muttered that she had somehow violated unwritten rules of political decorum. Some of the commentaries hinted that flighty females couldn't be trusted with matters of real importance. In any case, Japan's political classes soon moved on.

Reporter Seth Colter Walls has filed this analysis of recent military maneuvers:  

The wires are hot today with news of Hezbollah's weekend maneuvers along the border with Israel, as reported by Lebanese outlets. Pretty much everything about the revelation is newsworthy – in particular that Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was supervising the exercises in person, and that anyone was ever told about them at all.