The Sudanese government announced March 14 that President Omar al-Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes in Darfur, would attend two consecutive summits scheduled for late March in the Qatari capital of Doha. The first is a meeting of the Arab League, to be followed by a meeting of Arab and Latin American leaders. The Arab League has officially rejected the ICC warrant, saying it threatens peace talks in Sudan. (Xinhua, AFP, March 14) Earlier this week, a delegation of officials from Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah joined Syria's parliament speaker and the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group traveled to Sudan to express international support for al-Bashir. (AlJazeera, March 7)

US peace activist Tristan Anderson, of Oakland, Calif., was critically wounded when he was struck in the head by a tear-gas cannister launched by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Ni'lin, west of Ramallah, March 13. Four Palestinians were also shot with rubber-coated bullets in the incident. Anderson remains in life-threatening condition after undergoing surgery overnight at Tel Hashomer Hospital in Tel Aviv.

On March 13, the Obama administration officially abandoned the term "enemy combatant." In a filing with the DC District Court, the Justice Department said that it will no longer use the term and asserted a new standard for the government's authority to hold detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The Obama administration is still claiming it has the authority to hold prisoners at Gitmo, but says it will now be based on authority from Congress and the international laws of war. The Bush administration claimed that the president could unilaterally hold prisoners without charge.

Trust fund millionaire James G. Cummings, a neo-Nazi sympathizer from Maine who was slain by his wife Amber in December, allegedly had the radioactive components necessary to construct a "dirty bomb," a newly released threat analysis report states. The man, allegedly furious over the election of Barack Obama, purchased radioactive materials over the Internet.

The government's terrorist watch list has hit 1 million entries, according to figures released to USA Today—up 32% since 2007. The rise comes despite the removal of 33,000 entries last year by the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center in an effort to purge the list of outdated information and remove people cleared in investigations.

Workers at a Sony plant in Pontonx-sur-l'Adour, France, who took hostage the chief executive of the Japanese group's French arm, released him and other managers after they agreed to discuss severance terms. Serge Foucher and the other executives were released March 13 after workers obtained guarantees that they would open a new round of negotiations.

"Violent drug trafficking organizations threaten both the United States and Mexican communities," Vice President Joe Biden said at a ceremony to nominate Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as the new drug czar. Biden said Kerlikowske would oversee a strategy to improve intelligence sharing and boost interdiction of drugs into the US and guns and cash into Mexico. "It is a strategy we need...in order to bring the situation under control, to protect our people, and to bring about the demise of the Mexican drug cartels," Biden said.

An urgent plea for the protection of the lands of uncontacted indigenous peoples in the Gran Chaco, a region of scrub forest and arid plains in western Paraguay, has been issued by nine local organizations after round-table talks sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme. The Totobiegosode, a sub-group of the Ayoreo, are living in voluntary isolation as Brazilian cattle ranchers encroach on their territory.