At least six people were killed and 20 others injured when a car bomb exploded outside the mayor's office in the Colombian Pacific port city of Buenaventura March 25. Gen. Freddy Padilla, the head of Colombia's armed forces, blamed the country's guerillas. "Surely this was the FARC," he said. President Alvaro Uribe announced a $150,000 reward for information leading to those responsible. (AlJazeera, March 25)

Saudi Arabia announced the arrest March 25 of more than 100 in a supposed al-Qaeda plot to target the kingdom's oil infrastructure. One cell consisted of 101, and two smaller cells were made up of six men each, the Interior Ministry said. The large cell comprised 47 Saudis and 51 Yemenis, as well as a Somali, a Bangladeshi and an Eritrean, according to the statement read on state television. The two smaller groups were made up of 11 Saudis and a Yemeni, who security officials described as being a prominent member of al-Qaeda.

From Amnesty International, March 23:

Amnesty International on Tuesday urged authorities in El Salvador to repeal an amnesty law that protects those responsible for thousands of killings and disappearances during the country's 12-year armed conflict, including the killing of Catholic priest Monsignor Romero on 24 March 1980.

Top leaders from the US and Mexico agreed to emphasize intelligence coordination in the next $331 million phase of the Merida Initiative following discussions in Mexico City on March 23. Mexican President Felipe Calderon and Government Secretary Fernando Francisco Gómez-Mont hosted the meeting with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, and National Intelligence director Dennis C. Blair.

A long-simmering territorial dispute between India and Bangladesh has been resolved as an uninhabited Bay of Bengal island was swallowed by the rising seas. The territory known as New Moore Island to Indians and South Talpatti to Bangladeshis has disappeared from satellites images, reports Jadavpur University's School of Oceanographic Studies in Calcutta. "What these two countries could not achieve from years of talking, has been resolved by global warming," said Prof. Sugata Hazra, adding that anyone wishing to visit the island now would have to travel by submarine. "We will have ever larger numbers of people displaced from the Sunderbans as more island areas come under water." (BBC News, March 24)

In speeches before the annual Washington policy conference of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) March 22, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took barely veiled stabs at each other. "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today," Netanyahu told 7,500 cheering delegates. "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." His remarks received a standing ovation—but also denunciations from a few protesters whose shouts were quickly drowned out by the AIPAC delegates.

In a possible sequel to the recent Dubai assassination, Israeli spy planes flew "uninvited and unannounced" over Budapest the same day a Syrian man was shot to death in his car in the Hungarian capital, the New York Post reports March 19. Two Israeli air force Gulfstream V-type jets flew more than 1,300 miles over Turkey, Bulgaria and Romania on March 17 before flying over Budapest and then disappearing, Hungarian media reports said.

The US detention center at Bagram in Afghanistan could be expanded into a military prison for terrorist suspects detained around the world under one option being considered as White House officials try to find an alternative to Guantánamo Bay, the London Times reports March 22. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, has voiced his opposition, because of the negative publicity it would generate.