From Earth First!, March 29:

Environmental Activists Jailed as Grand Jury Indictments Increase

San Francisco, CA—As attorneys argue in federal court in San Francisco on March 30 to quash a grand jury investigating a protest in San Francisco, activists point to current trends that use secret grand juries to carry out broad, politically-motivated sweeps of environmental and other activists around the country.

From the technology news site CNET, March 29:

Unmanned aerial vehicles have soared the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq for years, spotting enemy encampments, protecting military bases, and even launching missile attacks against suspected terrorists.

Some 15,000 people marched along Mexico City's Reforma avenue on March 16 to protest water privatization plans as the representatives of 140 countries met nearby for the opening of the 4th World Water Forum. "Water isn't for sale and won't be sold," the marchers chanted, denouncing all three major Mexican political parties for water policies that "degrade and profit from the suffering of the people." In 1993 the then-ruling centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) awarded a 30-year water concession in Cancun, Quintana Roo, to the French multinational now known as SUEZ, while the Federal District, governed by the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), recently signed a contract with the Mexican water bottler Bonafont, owned by the French multinational Groupe Danone. Mexican president Vicente Fox Quesada, of the center- right National Action Party (PAN), is the former head of Coca- Cola Mexico, which sells Agua Ciel brand bottled water. (Adital, March 17; Minga Informativa de Movimientos Sociales, March 22)

Six meters is almost 20 feet. From The Guardian, March 25:

Half of Greenland and vast areas of Antarctica are destined to melt if global warming continues at the same pace until the end of the century, scientists warned on Thursday.

From AP, March 23:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- U.S. and British troops Thursday freed three Christian peace activists in a rural area of Iraq without firing a shot, ending a four-month hostage drama in which an American among the group was shot to death and dumped on a Baghdad street.

From AP, March 22:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — Authorities launched a probe today into the killings by Afghan security forces of at least 15 people, who an Afghan army commander claimed were Taliban rebels but locals said were tribesmen wanting to attend a religious festival.

On March 16, 2003, Washington state-born activist Rachel Corrie, 23, was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer while acting as a "human shield" against the demolition of a Palestinian home in Rafah, on the Gaza Strip. Last year, Katherine Viner, an editor at The Guardian, and actor Alan Rickman (known for roles in Sense and Sensibility and Love Actually) adapted 184 pages of Corrie's journals and e-mails, beginning at the age of 10, into a stage play. My Name is Rachel Corrie, directed by Rickman and starring Meghan Dodds, ran to wide acclaim in London. It was scheduled to arrive on March 22 at the New York Theater Workshop, known for embracing such controversial material as Tony Kushner's Angels in America; Homebody, Kabul and the original pre-Broadway Rent. In late February, just weeks before the play was to begin, the theater's artistic director, James Nicola, announced in a statement that the play would be "postponed indefinitely," citing a "very edgy situation" following the illness of Ariel Sharon and the election of Hamas.

Tens of thousands of Mexican miners went on strike from March 1 to March 3 at 70 companies in at least eight states--Hidalgo, Coahuila, Guerrero, Chihuahua, Queretaro, Michoacan, Guanajuato and Mexico state--in a wildcat action protesting local conditions and government intervention in the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM).