In the Thai village of Nong Kun Na along the disputed border with Cambodia, security forces are digging in, building bunkers and training volunteers to act as defense guards. The development comes as Red Cross officials report close to 60,000 now displaced. Fighting between the Thai and Cambodian armies over the past six days in the surrounding jungle has killed at least 13 soldiers on both sides and injured dozens more. "Before the fighting started, I was a security guard for an apartment building in Bangkok," said Wonbik Chai, 42, one of the village's newly recruited defense volunteers. "Now I've come to protect my village."

Egyptian public prosecutor Abdel-Maguid Mahmoud on April 25 ordered ousted president Hosni Mubarak transferred from a private hospital in Sharm el-Sheikh to a prison hospital in Cairo. Mahmoud ordered the transfer after Mubarak's doctor cleared him to travel. Mubarak was hospitalized for heart trouble shortly after his resignation. Prosecutors have urged Mubarak's transfer so that he may be questioned by officials about allegations ranging from embezzlement to murder. The Egyptian Ministry of Interior will oversee Mubarak's transfer first to a military prison and then to the hospital in Tora Prison where he will be held for questioning.

Syrian authorities reportedly arrested hundreds of protesters and dissidents April 26 as the military surrounded Daraa, Duma, Homs and several other cities and villages. Telephone, electricity and water lines have been cut to the besieged cities and villages, which are mostly in the southwestern Hauran plateau region, rights activists say. Activists from the Syrian Revolution 2011 group posted reports on Facebook claiming tanks and snipers in Daraa are shooting "at anything that moves." The Syrian government says the troops were ordered to Daraa to put down a conspiracy by Islamists.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) announced April 26 that a senior al-Qaeda leader, NATO's second most wanted fighter in the country, had been killed in an air-strike in Kunar province 12 days earlier. Abu Hafs al-Najdi AKA Abdul Ghani, a Saudi national, was reportedly killed in Dangam district as he met other senior insurgents and al-Qaeda members. (AlJazeera, April 26) The news came a day after Taliban militants managed to free some 500 of their fellow insurgents from a Kandahar prison thanks to a 1,000-foot-long tunnel the group had dug during the past five months. At least 60 of the escapees have since been recaptured. (AFP, April 27; Slate, April 25)

On April 8 a German development bank, DEG Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH, cancelled a previously approved loan to Grupo Dinant, a large Honduran company that produces snacks, other food products and cooking oil; the loan was reportedly worth $20 million. Shortly afterwards, EDF Trading, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the French energy firm Electricité de France SA, cancelled a contract to buy carbon credits from a Dinant subsidiary, Exportadora del Atlántico, under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for carbon trading.

A group of activists for the rights of indigenous Mapuche Chileans interrupted the Easter mass at Santiago's Metropolitan Cathedral on April 24 to call for the release of four Mapuche prisoners who have been on hunger strike since March 15. The activists, led by the prisoners' spokesperson, Natividad Llanquileo, waited until a few minutes after the homily to begin their protest; they shouted slogans and unfurled a banner that read: "Freedom for the Mapuche political prisoners." Carabinero police agents arrived and dispersed the demonstrators; two were detained but were released later.

After pulling back from besieged Misrata, Moammar Qaddafi's forces have reportedly been pouring into Libya's western Nafusah Mountains, surrounding and shelling villages of the Berber minority. The offensive in the remote region follows the seizure of a border post near Wazen by rebels last week. Some 30,000 have fled the region into Tunisia, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. "He has been trying to starve us," said Jamal Maharouk, a Berber rebel fighter in a Tunisian hospital told the New York Times. He insisted that rebel actions in the region were purely defensive. "By my god, these are peaceful people fighting against an evil regime," he said.

In Yemen, security forces shot and wounded at least 10 people April 25 as they opened fire to disperse huge anti-regime protests in the city of Taez, south of the capital Sanaa. In Syria, human rights activists report that 25 people were shot dead as government forces deployed tanks to put down protests in Daraa. Rights activists put the total death toll in the Yemeni protests at 130 since January, and in the Syrian protests at 350 over the last month. However, with Syrian figure is harder to confirm, with journalists barred from the country. (Middle East Online, Middle East Online, Airang TV, BBC World Service, April 25)