Two prominent Somali clan leaders, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed and Hussein Aideed, have issued an ultimatum to the Ethiopian forces to leave Somalia now or prepare to fight to the death. The two leaders of the Hawiye clan that dominates the Somali capital, Mogadishu, spoke after holding talks in Eritrea. Aideed said that Somalis will unite against "the brutal occupation" by Ethiopia.

The Popular People's Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO) has joined with members of the Union of Mexican Jurists in a "Popular Court" to judge the repression and rights violations in southern Mexico's Oaxaca state over the last year of social conflict. The Popular Court is to collect evidence on "crimes against humanity perpetrated against the people," and submit the findings to national and international legal bodies. APPO Spokesman Florentino Lopez said that over the course of the conflict, police violence has claimed 27 lives, while 43 activists remain in prison—including APPO leader Flavio Sosa, held in isolation at El Altiplano maximum security prison 23 hours a day. (Prensa Latina, April 21)

You don't have to support either Michael Bloomberg or gun control to understand why this is sinister. We hope. From AP via amNY, April 18, links added:

NEW YORK -- A magazine cover by the National Rifle Association protesting Mayor Michael Bloomberg's campaign against guns is raising questions for its depiction of him as an octopus, which has a history of use as an anti-Semitic symbol.

US troops are building a three-mile wall to separate one of Baghdad's Sunni enclaves from surrounding Shi'ite districts, as part of a contentious security plan that has fueled fears of the Iraqi capital's "Balkanization." When the barrier is finished, the Sunni community of Adamiya, on the eastern side of the Tigris River, will be completely gated. Traffic control points staffed by Iraqi troops will restrict access, the US military said.

Shelling and gunfire are rocking Mogadishu as Islamists and Hawiye clan insurgents battle government and Ethiopian troops for control of the Somali capital. The UN says 321,000 people—nearly a third of the city's population—have fled since February, in the country's worst refugee crisis since 1991. Since April 18, violence has killed 113 people and wounded another 222, the Elman Peace and Human Rights Organization said. "We call on both sides to cease the war immediately without any pre-condition," Elman chairman Sudan Ali Ahmed told Reuters.

Authorities say gunmen who stormed a hospital and battled police in Tijuana April 18, leaving three dead, were soliders for the city's Arellano Felix drug cartel. The clashes began when police tried to stop a truck carrying two alleged Arellano Felix gunmen suspected of plotting to attack members of a rival cartel. The two men fled, firing at their pursuers and crashing into another vehicle. One suspect was killed, and another wounded and taken to Tijuana's public hospital. Four gunmen then headed to the hospital to free him, but were confronted by state police escorting some prisoners for routine surgery. A new shootout erupted and the gunmen fled inside, seizing a ward for several hours until dozens of federal police and army troops stormed in and subdued them.

The Other Campaign of Jovel—local chapter of the Zapatista civil initiative in the Chiapas highland city of San Cristobal de Las Casas—has turned over to the agrarian authorities in the state capital, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a critical analysis of land conflicts in the restive southern Mexican state. The analysis accuses the federal Agrarian Reform Secretariat and the local Agrarian Tribunals of favoritism in approving land claims by those seeking to expel Zapatista communities. A statement in support of the analysis is signed by over 200 grassroots and non-governmental organizations, and more than a thousand individuals.

The Section 22 teachers union in the conflicted southern Mexican state of Oaxaca has entered into dialogue with the federal Government Secretariat (Gobernación). There are two issues they have agreed to discuss: release of unionists detained in the strike over the past year, and resolving the situation at 227 Oaxaca schools divided by labor strife. These schools are currently in the hands of the rival Section 59 union, formed by Oaxaca's ruling political machine to divide the movement. (La Jornada, April 19)