Quick Hits

President Bush has made a surprise visit to Iraq. He had been scheduled to go to Australia, but left hours early to visit Iraq instead. The President flew into an air base in Anbar province, instead of flying into Baghdad.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrived ahead of Bush, and convened a meeting with the country's top political leaders to highlight Bush administration hopes for prodding Iraq into a ''bottom-up'' approach to national reconciliation.

Gates conferred with senior U.S. officials, including Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, before opening a session with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, President Jalal Talabani, and other top Iraqi officials from Baghdad.

Bush and his national security team flew directly to this air base in a remote part of Anbar province, bypassing Baghdad in a symbolic expression of impatience with political paralysis in the nation's capital. The gesture underscored the U.S. belief that the spark for progress may come at the local level.

Palestinian terrorists fired kassam rockets into Sderot. This time, they hit the courtyard of a day care center. Several people suffered from shock in the attack, but rockets rained down elsewhere around the City.

It followed a salvo of seven Kassam rockets that landed in and around the beleaguered town Monday morning. After one of the rockets thudded into the courtyard of a day care center, soldiers scrambled to evacuate everyone inside. Twelve people, including some of the babies, suffered shock and a building was damaged.

Despite the fact that none of the 15 babies at the center were wounded, frantic parents across the city - already furious over the government's failure to protect them and their children from the near-daily rocket fire - pulled their children out of schools on the second day of the academic year.

The Janjaweed is busy killing each other after killing or running off everyone else in Darfur.

[T]hugo Chavez says that he can remain in power until 2027. Venezuelans have only to look at Zimbabwe to see what's in their future: a dictator in Mugabe who has thoroughly and utterly destroyed a once vibrant economy. State takeovers of foreign companies will only make the situation worse.

Meanwhile, the situation in Thailand remains restive. The Islamists are still busy attacking soldiers and civilians alike.