A bomb exploded Sunday, Aug. 24, in An Najaf, a major Shiite center south of Baghdad. The target appeared to be Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim, who was slightly wounded along with 10 other people.

The Israeli-Palestinian truce is finished. The war has resumed and it is difficult to see any safety net beneath it. To the extent that the war can be limited, it will be limited as the Israelis and Palestinians decide to limit it. The war now is pretty much beyond the control of outside powers.

The day after the bombing of the United Nations building in Baghdad, the explosion continues to reverberate. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have said they plan to move their personnel out of Iraq, while U.N. officials said they would remain. At a press conference in Sweden, U.N.

Tuesday was a day of explosions. First, a truck bomb went off at the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, killing U.N. special envoy Sergio Veira de Mello and at least 16 others. Later, at least 20 Israelis were killed and 60 wounded in a suicide bombing on a bus.

Britain and Bulgaria are introducing a resolution in the U.N. Security Council expressing support for Libya's acceptance of responsibility for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. A vote on the resolution, which also calls for the immediate lifting of all U.N. sanctions against Libya, is expected by the middle of the week.

The action was pretty intense in Iraq over the weekend, with the death of a Danish soldier in the south -- the first non-U.S./U.K. soldier killed in the war -- as well as an attack on a pipeline that exports oil to Turkey and a mortar assault on an Iraqi prison that killed and wounded Iraqi prisoners.

A massive power outage hit the United States and Canada during the afternoon of Aug. 14. It stretched from Michigan east to Vermont and north into Canada as far as Ottawa. Well before anyone had a clear idea of what happened, officials up and down the line were saying that they did not believe it was the result of a terrorist attack.

Three men have been arrested in a plot to smuggle surface-to-air missiles to al Qaeda. The significance of this case is not altogether self-evident to us. Actually, al Qaeda does not seem to be in any way involved in the case, except in the mind of the arms dealer, Hemant Lakhani, who was arrested Aug. 12 at the Newark, N.J., airport.

Two separate suicide attacks on Aug. 12 have broken the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire. One was inside Israel proper, in the town of Rosh Ha'ayin. One person was killed and six were wounded in this attack. The other attack, in which one person was killed and an unknown number were wounded, took place outside the town of Ariel on the West Bank.

The world as a whole seems to have been gripped by August's torpor. Europe is on vacation, as is U.S. President George W. Bush, who appears to have put critical decisions on hold until September. Apart from the entire state of California, there is little of interest going on.