The US March 9 vowed to keep up military surveillance in waters off China and protested what it called harassment one day earlier of a US surveillance ship operated by civilian contractors for the Navy's Military Sealift Command. The Pentagon charged that a Chinese intelligence vessel and four others "shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close" to the USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea, then threw obstacles in the water as it tried to leave. During the confrontation, the Impeccable crew sprayed some of the Chinese sailors with a fire hose, causing some of the Chinese sailors to strip to their underwear.

A March 6 headline in the official Chinese news agency Xinhua acknowledged that the declaration of March 28 as "Serfs Emancipation Day" is intended as a "tit-for-tat" against "Dalai clique." The rubber-stamp parliament of Tibet Autonomous Region adopted a motion in January to commemorate the day in 1959 when China officially dissolved the local government of Tibet. (Tibetan Review, March 9)

A 44-day general strike in the French Caribbean department of Guadeloupe ended with an agreement signed March 4 by representatives of the French government and the Collective Against Extreme Exploitation (LKP), which led the strike. In the Jacques Binot Accord—named for a union leader killed the night of Feb. 17—the LKP won its basic demand for a raise of 200 euros a month (now about $253) for low-wage workers. The agreement's 165 articles also cover a wide range of economic demands: reductions in charges for school meals, in bank rates, in the price of water and auto fuel; lower real estate taxes; a 20% reduction in bus fares between towns; a rent freeze; and a freeze on the price of a loaf of bread.

Saying it "has not complied with the aims for which it was created" in 1998, Ecuador's government withdrew the legal charter of the Quito-based non-governmental organization Acción Ecológica, effectively ordering the group closed. The order, issued March 2 by Health Minister Caroline Chang and made public a week later, was protested by Acción Ecológica as "unconstitutional."

Ecuador's trans-Andean Heavy Crude Pipeline (OCP) is back on line following a rupture that spilled 14,000 barrels in the Amazon region. The pipeline was shut for seven days following the Feb. 24 leak near the rainforest community of Santa Rosa, Napo province. Specialists were mobilized to the region to contain the oil slick that contaminated local waterways. But Marlon Santi, leader of Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), said, "There are 47 communities affected, the situation is grave."

The French company slated for a massive contract in Peru's Amazon region is having its income from oil revenues frozen in neighboring Ecuador. The announcement was made by PetroEcuador after the company, Perenco, missed its deadline to pay off $350 million in back taxes to Ecuador's government. According to reports, PetroEcuador said it would freeze the income from 720,000 barrels of oil produced by Perenco.

President Hugo Chávez called Colombian Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos a "threat to the peace in South America" and pledged to hit back hard if Colombia made any military incursion into Venezuela. "Sadly, and it would hurt me to the bottom of my soul, I would immediately have the Suhkoi fighters fired up and the armored tanks; I am not going to let anyone disrespect Venezuela's sovereignty for anything in the world," Chávez said on his weekly TV broadcast "Aló, Presidente."

From the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), March 8:

Freedom and Equality remain the aim of our struggles
After seven years of occupation, women in Iraq still suffer from insecurity and outrageous misogynist practices of the Islamist and nationalist ruling militias. The multiplying anti-women media of the ruling militias attempt to abort all our modern achievements for women's rights. Their media shows women who veil their presence from the society with ragged historic wear, thus announcing their total submission to the newly created male-chauvinist culture in Iraq.