The government of Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, forced to resign last month after a defeat on the issue, narrowly won a Senate vote to keep Rome's 1,900 troops in Afghanistan March 27. But questions remain over the mission's future, as NATO allies criticize Italy's handling of a recent hostage crisis, in which Rome engineered a prisoner-swap to secure the release of Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a well-known Italian journalist held 15 days by the Taliban. The United States, Germany, Britain, and the Netherlands have all denounced the deal, under which five jailed Taliban figures—indlucing three considered high-level—were freed in exchange for Mastrogiacomo. "There was a clear sense in the room that none of us should agree to negotiate the release of hostages in return for terrorists," US Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said after a NATO meeting in Brussels.

Marijuana is not kosher for Passover, Israel's pot-friendly Green Leaf Party says, advising Jews who observe the holiday's special dietary laws to take a break from smoking the weed. The Party, which has made several unsuccessful attempts to win election to the Knesset on a legalization platform, announced that products of the cannabis plant have been grouped by rabbis within a family of foods such as peas, beans and lentils that is off-limits to Ashkenazi Jews during Passover. But it said the rabbinical ban for the holiday beginning at sunset Monday could be a blessing in disguise. "Logic dictates that if the rabbis say cannabis is non-kosher for Passover, it is apparently kosher during the rest of the year," Michelle Levin, a spokeswoman for the party, told YNet news.

Militant activity in Pakistan is rapidly spreading from peripheral areas such as the Afghan border zone to the Punjabi heartland. A suicide bomber blew himself up near an army camp in Kharian, 85 miles southeast of the capital Islamabad March 29, killing a soldier and wounding seven others. (AFP, March 29)

Hundreds of insurgents armed with rocket launchers, artillery and machine guns are clashing with Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu. Ethiopian tanks patrol the streets, and the southern part of Mogadishu has become a no-go zone. BBC reports that Ethiopian helicopter gunships fired on a public market when insurgent tried to take shelter there.

A package of amendments to Egypt's constitution was overwhelmingly approved in a nationwide referendum March 27—but with only 27% turn-out due to a popular boycott. The country's leading rights group, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, put the figure even lower, estimating that only 2-3 percent of the electorate had voted five hours before polls closed. Ironically, Hosni Mubarak praised the vote: "I would like to stress that democracy is not achieved only through the constitutional and legal texts, but by the real expansion of grassroot participation."

Masked men on a motorcycle opened fire on an army vehicle in the Bajaur region of Pakistan's Tribal Areas March 26, killing five members of the military's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), including a major and an assistant director. Bajaur, one of Pakistan's seven federally administered tribal zones bordering Afghanistan, was the scene of an air-strike on a school in October 2006 that killed 80 people. In January 2006, a purported CIA missile strike in the same area, reportedly aimed at al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed 18 people.

The New York Times' March 24 review of a new exhibit on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at the Museum of the City of New York is a depressingly sinister and hypocritical piece of propaganda. Entitled "The Spanish Civil War: Black and White in a Murky, Ambiguous World" by Edward Rothstein, the piece pokes smarmy fun at the heroic and paints the critical precursor struggle to World War II with a bogus moral equivalism. Rothstein comes close to a fascism-wasn't-so-bad-after-all position, which is particularly frightening when so many of its characteristics (aggressive wars, secret prisons) are once again in evidence.

The aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis entered the Persian Gulf March 27, where it will conduct a joint exercise with the Dwight D. Eisenhower, which has been in the Gulf since October. The air wings of the two carrier groups will conduct a joint exercise while surface ships will hold exercises in anti-submarine, anti-surface ship and mine warfare. The Stennis is escorted by the guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam.