Andrés Taipe Chuquipuma, 22, on April 4 became the first fatal casualty in the ongoing civil strike (paro) at Islay village in Peru's Arequipa region against the planned Tía María copper mining project. He died in the hospital hours after receiving a bullet in the stomach in a confrontation with the National Police. Two more protesters at Islay were killed April 7. The following day, Peru's government announced that the project was cancelled, with the mining ministry saying the environmental impact assessment presented by the Southern Copper Corp. was "inadmissible." (BBC News, April 9; Dow Jones, April 8; RPP, April 4)

Israeli actor and political activist Juliano Mer-Khamis, who ran a theater project in the West Bank's Jenin refugee camp, was shot dead by unknown masked men on April 4 outside the theater he founded there. Khamis, 52, had received threats for his work in Jenin, but continued to divide his time between the camp and his home in Haifa. Khamis appeared in a number of Israeli films after his first film role in the 1984 production of the John Le Carre novel The Little Drummer Girl, about Mossad's hunt for a PLO bomber. Born to a Jewish mother and an Arab Christian father, he established the Freedom Theater group in Jenin during the first Intifada to promote co-existence.

Israeli air-strikes and artillery fire struck Gaza nine times April 8, killing eight, and bringing the total number of dead over the past 24 hours to thirteen, some half of them civilians. A mother and daughter, and elderly man were killed in two separate strikes near Khan Younis, a fourth—identified as an al-Qassam Brigades fighter—was killed near Gaza City, and two unidentified men was killed when a shell hit his home east of Gaza City. A statement from the Israeli Defense Forces acknowledged civilian casualties, saying that the military "regrets that the Hamas terrorist organization chooses to operate from within its civilian population, using it as a 'human shield'."

Friday prayers again exploded into protests in cities nearly across the Arab world April 8. In Syria security forces killed at least 10 people in the southern city of Deraa, while in the east, ethnic Kurds demonstrated for reform despite President Bashir Assad's offer this week to ease rules which bar many of them from obtaining citizenship. In Yemen, two people were shot dead and 25 wounded as security forces fired on protesters in the southern city of Taiz. (Reuters, April 8)

Gen. Abdelfatah Yunis, commander of Libya's rebel forces, said April 7 that NATO apologized for mistakenly hitting a column of rebel tanks near the eastern town of Ajdabiya. Yunis said the deadly air-strike occurred despite a warning to NATO that the tanks were being moved to the front line. By conflicting reports, the air-strike killed between four and 134 rebel fighters. NATO says it is investigating the incident. "We would like to receive answers about what happened. We would like a rational and convincing explanation," Gen. Yunis said. (BBC News, April 7) High-level US diplomatic figures from the US, UK and France are meanwhile said to have met with leading members of the Transitional National Council (TNC) to discuss (ostensibly "humanitarian") aid to the rebels. Only France, Italy and Qatar have thus far officially recognized the rebels as the legitimate government of Libya. (AFP, April 7)

Israeli artillery fire killed five Palestinians and injured some 40 after an anti-tank missile from the Gaza Strip hit a school bus in southern Israel, injuring two people, April 8. One of the dead is reported to be a small child. Hamas's armed wing claimed responsibility for the missile attack, saying it was an "initial response" to Israel killing three of the group's leaders last weekend, when an air-strike hit their car in southern Gaza. But the escalation comes one day after the Hamas administration in Gaza said it had got most armed Palestinian factions in Gaza to sign on to a ceasefire in a bid to prevent further Israeli strikes. (Ma'an News Agency, April 8)

From Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), April 5:

Washington, DC — A plan awaiting approval by the US Environmental Protection Agency that would dramatically increase permissible radioactive releases in drinking water, food and soil after "radiological incidents" is drawing vigorous objections from agency experts, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). At issue is the acceptable level of public health risk following a radiation release, whether an accidental spill or a "dirty bomb" attack.

From the PBS Frontline website, a translation by Frieda Afary of a March 29 statement from the Iranian site Akhbar Rooz:

Call for Active Opposition to the Nuclear Policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Fukushima completed the warning that was issued by Chernobyl. After Chernobyl, any trust in the ability of technology and the technicians to control the radioactive giant was lost. Fukushima further destroyed any trust in the ability to forecast earthquakes and other factors that turn nuclear power stations into ticking time bombs.