Chinese rescue workers are struggling to reach survivors of the devastating earthquake in a remote area of Qinghai province that has left at least 589 dead and thousands injured. The government has dispatched more than 3,000 paramilitary police and disaster response workers to the province's Yushu county on the Tibetan plateau, where 85% of the buildings were said to have collapse.

Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced that Nairobi is attempting to secure the release of Kenyan native Mohammed Abdumalik, who is currently detained at Guantánamo Bay. The news was revealed in a letter to Abdulmalik's family, informing them that the Kenyan government will ask the US to release the detainee. Abdulmalik's family filed a $30 million lawsuit against the Kenyan government last year, claiming that Abdulmalik was illegally detained, tortured, and renditioned to US authorities.

From Human Rights Watch, April 7:

Yemen: Investigate Laws-of-War Violations
Government and Huthi Rebels Should Hold Perpetrators Accountable
The Yemeni government and Huthi rebels should investigate alleged violations of the laws of war during the recent conflict and hold all those responsible to account, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. On February 11, 2010, both sides agreed to a truce - the sixth since the war began in 2004, but the agreement contains no accountability provisions.

China signed a free trade agreement on April 8 with Costa Rica—a country that only established diplomatic ties with the Asian giant in 2007. China's Commerce Ministry said in a statement that the pact was signed in Beijing by Commerce Minister Chen Deming and his Costa Rican counterpart Marco Ruiz. President-elect Laura Chinchilla, who takes over from Oscar Arias next month, will need support from opposition lawmakers to approve the deal and make Costa Rica the third Latin American nation to seal a trade agreement with the People's Republic.

Unidentified assailants threw an explosive over the fence of the US consulate in the Mexican border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, on April 11. The blast caused some damage but no injuries. Authorities are investigating the explosion and have temporarily closed the consulate, as well as another in nearby Piedras Negras. "The Consulate General and Consular Agency will reopen when we are confident that we have adequate security to keep our visitors safe," a press release said. (Latin America News Dispatch, April 12; BBC News, April 11)

Indigenous journalist Mauricio Moreno Medina, founding member of a community radio station for the Pijao people, was murdered April 11 by unknown assailants at his home in the town of Ortega, Tolima department. Medina, 50, died of multiple knife wounds. Police say they see no link to illegal armed groups, asserting that Moreno had not received any death threats. But Reporters Without Borders (RWB) suggest that the murder was not a "crime of passion" as police maintain. "The label 'crime of passion' is too often used to avoid investigation of any link with the victim’s work, even to the extent of covering up a case. This has already happened in several other murders of journalists in Colombia," RWB said. "As a director of a community radio, the kind of media often targeted by the authorities, particularly in conflict areas, Medina ran risks as a result of his work."

On the evening of April 9 agents of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) began removing some 1,300 families—about 7,335 people—from Port-au-Prince's Sylvio Cator soccer stadium, where they had camped out since the Jan. 12 earthquake destroyed much of the city, killing as many as 230,000 people and leaving some 1.3 million without homes. "Soccer has to be brought back to life," said stadium director Rolny Saint-Louis. "There are players waiting to be able to play and feed their families from their work." The stadium's managers say the Taiwanese are planning to repair the bleachers and replace the artificial turf, which the earthquake survivors had reportedly damaged.

Speaking at an April 6 press conference at the ruined National Palace in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haitian president René Préval expressed his satisfaction with the results of an international donors meeting held by the United Nations (UN) in New York on March 31 to discuss the reconstruction of Haiti after the devastation of the Jan. 12 earthquake. The donors pledged nearly $10 billion in aid and about $350 million in direct support for the government's 2010 budget. During the next 18 months the management of the various projects will be overseen by a commission made up of Haitians and international representatives. Haitian prime minister Jean Max Bellerive and former US president Bill Clinton, now the UN's special envoy for Haiti, are currently the co-chairs of the commission. Préval insisted that the Haitian president would always have the last word on the plans.