We recently reported that U.S. military forces have been approved to engage in drug enforcement operations in Afghanistan. Now comes this report of DEA agents in New York busting a major opium lord said to be linked to the Taliban resistance:

Kudos to Pacific New Service for picking up our recent commentary on the coordinated propaganda blitz against Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Readers of WW4 REPORT are aware that within a week of each other, Otto Reich called in a National Review cover story for a "coalition of the willing" to act against the Cuba-Venezuela "Axis of Evil," and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA) issued a call to drain the terrorist "swamp" in Latin America, starting with Venezuela. Ominously, the media offensive comes at a time of escalating border tensions between Venezuela and Colombia, Washington's militarized South American client state.

Even after the Justice Department has blinked in the case of whistle-blowing FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, declassifying her claims and allowing her suit to go ahead, the judiciary is now blocking public accesss to the proceedings...

From a blogger working with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other groups comes this April 16 appeal on the case of two teenage Muslim girls detained on immigration charges following spurious claims they had been considering suicide-terror martyrdom:

Hours after polls closed in Saudi Arabia's third and final round of quasi-democratic elections, presumed Islamic militants attacked a security checkpoint in the holy city of Mecca, sparking a gunbattle in which one police officer was killed and several wounded. Up to 15 police and civilian vehicels were also reported destroyed. The battle reportedly began when a group of men in a taxi attempted to run the checkpoint.(AP, AHN, April 21)

Italy has finally blinked. Afer two generations of delay, the first of three pieces of a third-century Ethiopian obelisk plundered by the Italian fascist occupation in the 1930s has touched ground in the ancient city of Axum, where it was met by a cheering crowd and pealing church bells. Engineers extended the runway to accomodate the four-engine cargo plane carrying the precious cargo from Rome. The remaining pieces are to arrive shortly, Italian authorities pledge. (UK Telegraph, April 21)

Unfortunately, the recent victory for indigenous land rights in Brazil may be followed by a rollback of recent gains for indigenous peoples in Botswana--where the world is paying even less attention. Reads an April 18 alert from Survival International:

Botswana's government is pushing a bill through Parliament to scrap the key clause in the Constitution which protects Bushmen's rights. The move comes half way through the Bushmen's landmark legal action against the government, in which the same clause forms a major plank of the Bushmen's case. The trial marks the first time in Botswana's history that the clause has actually been tested in court, but the government aims to scrap it within a few months.

Hopes for a moderately progressive pontiff who could loosen up the Chuch line on the supposed evils of condoms in the age of AIDS--or even an African or Latin American one who could help Catholicism rally against the aggressive inroads of Islam and Protestantism on those continents—have been dashed by the choice of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.