The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times all lead with the carnage in Iraq, with Shiites attacking Sunni mosques as revenge for Thursday's massive death toll. The Wall Street Journal tops its worldwide news box with Iraq.

The LAT dispenses with any timidity over whether Iraq is engaged in civil war and gets straight to the point in the lede: "Iraq's civil war worsened Friday … " The NYT and WP are not so blunt. The Times quotes a Bush administration spokesman who says the Iraqi president and prime minister do not believe it is civil war, while the Post handles it by saying the country is being propelled toward "full-blown civil war."

Whatever it is, the LAT says it provoked at least 65 deaths in Baghdad and elsewhere by Friday night. According to the paper's tally, a dozen or more Sunni mosques were attacked throughout the country. It also reports that a militia loyal to Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr set up roadblocks and threatened to kill Sunni families if they don't leave their houses within two days.

The LAT, which has the day's best roundup, gets solid quotes from one Iraqi police officer who watched a Sunni-Shiite battle and says the Iraqi army did nothing to stop it: "The army did not interfere. And we (the police) didn't receive any orders to interfere. We would not have interfered even in the event that we were ordered to do so, because this is the Iraqi army's turf."

The NYT says Iraqi forces "were absent, unwilling or unable to stop the attackers," while the WP says Friday's events "illustrated Iraqi security forces' inability to rein in violence."

The WSJ relays an AP report on six Sunnis being burned alive, but other papers say they could not confirm it happened. The paper also puts the day's death toll at 87.

On top of the attacks, politicians loyal to Sadr threatened to boycott the government if Iraq's prime minister follows through on plans to meet with President Bush next week in Jordan. The Bush administration says it will press ahead with the meeting, and some say this is simply political posturing on the part of Sadr loyalists. Still, the LAT points out that their boycott, if it occurs, would likely cause the government to collapse.

The WSJ runs a helpful description of the current proposals on how to deal with the worsening situation, as well as charts, graphs, and a list of facts ranging from numbers of insurgents to the percentage of American soldiers who have died in Iraq who are white (74 percent).

The NYT, WP, and LAT front stories on the poisoning death of a former Russian spy who had been critical of President Vladimir Putin. Adding to the intrigue is the method used to poison him: polonium 210, a radioactive material that would apparently require expert handling when used in such a way. It also occurred in London, which the papers note was the same city where a Bulgarian dissident was poisoned in 1978 after being stuck with the tip of an umbrella.

Of course, the United States had its own share of chaos yesterday. Hordes of people gathered at various, largely suburban locations, resulting in occasional skirmishes and, undoubtedly, isolated outbursts of frustration. They went shopping.