Haaretz, citing Israeli military sources, reported April 2 that the Israeli Defense Forces are preparing for the possibility of a Syrian attack on the Golan Heights that will start as a result of a "miscalculation" on the part of the Syrians. The Israelis supposedly fear that the Syrians fear Israel is planning to strike Syria and Lebanon simultaneous with US strikes on Iran. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was reportedly appraised of the hair-trigger situation when he visited IDF forces in the North last week.

As Somali insurgents square off against Ethiopian and government troops in Somalia's capital city of Mogadishu, bands of pirates have been making life increasingly difficult for ships coming in and out of the city's harbour. An Indian cargo vessel was hijacked April 2, and a UAE-registered ship narrowly managed escape as it pulled into the sea April 4. (Madrid11.net, April 4)

Nine children were among 12 people killed when a suicide truck-bomber drove into a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk April 2. A further 192 were injured in the blast, and many of the victims were children from a nearby primary school. Local hospitals were overrun with the injured, many of them school children.

"As Al Qaeda rebuilds in Pakistan’s tribal areas, a new generation of leaders has emerged under Osama bin Laden to cement control over the network’s operations, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials." Thus begins "New Generation of Qaeda Chiefs Is Seen on Rise" by Mark Mazzetti on the front page of the New York Times April 2. Mazzetti, mostly citing unnamed "intelligence officials," says a post-9-11 leadership has emerged, replacing apprehended directors like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and running a new network of training camps in the mountains of Pakistan.

Talli Nauman writes for Mexico's El Universal, April 2:

Environmentalists are rejoicing over the cancellation of a liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal project that the federal government had licensed Chevron Texaco to undertake adjacent to the Coronado Islands proposed protected area near Ensenada on the Pacific Coast of Baja California state.

Representatives at the third Continental Summit of the Indigenous Peoples and Nationalities in Iximche, Guatemala, spoke out against US plans to use corn crops to produce fuel. "We have a long tradition as corn growers, and using corn to produce fuel will be like sacrilege, commercializing our heritage for the benefit of large transnationals," said Cesar Tahu, a Quiche Maya leader. Juan Tiney, member of the Continental Summit Committee, emphasized the traditional place of corn as the staple food of Native Americans, protesting that "it will now be used to feed machines, for money and profits, destroying thousand-year-old cultures." (Press TV, Iran, March 31)

Protests that led the Brazilian state oil company to halt production in the Ecuadoran Amazon have ended, Ecuador's Energy Ministry announced March 30. The Ministry statement said losses from the strike totaled more than $40 million, or 840,000 barrels of crude.

Ecuador‘s highest electoral court fired a judge who tried to return half the country‘s legislators to their posts March 28, as a political crisis deepened over a planned referndum on rewriting the constitution. President Rafeal Correa told 2,000 supporters that day that opposition "political mafias" were trying to block the referendum, and that the Ramirez‘s injunction reinstating the 57 dismissed legislators was "illegitimate." Some who gathered to hear him speak burned in effigy giant rats with the word "Congress" scrawled across them.