Nicaragua has issued a passport for Thailand's former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Thai authorities have verified. The document allows Thaksin—wanted in Thailand on charges of inciting the recent political riots—to travel internationally. His previous passport had been revoked, and he is currently in hiding. During the protests, he hopped from Australia, China, Hong Kong, Dubai and Cambodia in his private jet, issuing video messages to his followers. The Thai ambassador to Mexico met with the Nicaraguan ambassador to that nation April 17, to convey the message that the Thai government does not wish to see Thaksin using any country as an off-shore base to destabilise the Kingdom. The Thai ambassador also requested Nicaragua extradite Thaksin, although Thailand and Nicaragua have no extradition treaty. (Electric News Paper, Singapore, April 19; Thai News Agency, April 17)

President Evo Morales said three men shot dead by an elite National Police squad in the eastern city of Santa Cruz on April 16 were involved in a foiled plot to assassinate him. Police officials said the three men—identified as a Romanian, an Irishman and a Bolivian—were killed after they opened fire on commandos who tried to enter their room on the fourth floor of the Hotel Las Américas. A Hungarian and a Bolivian were taken into custody in connection to the shootout. Bolivia's official news agency described the five men implicated as mercenaries belonging to a "terrorist cell."

Palestinian sources reported April 17 that a local protester was killed after being hit in the chest by a tear gas canister during a demonstration against the separation wall in the West Bank village of Bilin. Village resident Bassem Ibrahim Abu-Rahma, 30, was evacuated to a Ramallah hospital, where he died of his wounds. The army confirmed the report of his death, and IDF representatives met with Palestinian officials later in the day as part of a joint investigation into the incident. (YNet, April 17).

Citing stabilization brought about by pro-Moscow Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Russian authorities announced they are ending the decade-long "counter-terrorism operation" in Chechnya. Russia boasts that violence and terrorism in the southern Muslim republic have been put down—but sporadic violence persists, and human rights groups have accused Kadyrov of using militias to commit widespread abuses against the Chechen people.

The Somali parliament voted April 18 to adopt Islamic sharia law. A parliamentary spokesperson said that more than 300 Somali MPs voted for the implementation of sharia as part of an attempt by Somali President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed to bring stability to the "failed state." Last month, Ahmed announced that he would support the imposition of a moderate form of sharia as part of a cease-fire agreement with the country's Hizb al-Islamiya and al-Shabaab rebels.

Greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare, the US Environmental Protection Agency found April 17, under a scientific review ordered in 2007 by the Supreme Court. The proposed finding states: "In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act."

A three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit vacated April 17 the Bush-era program for leasing of land for oil and gas drilling on the US Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) along the Alaskan coast. The court held that the Department of Interior had not carried out an environmental sensitivity study in accordance with the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) when it ranked the sensitivity of various program areas in the Beaufort, Bering, and Chukchi seas only in terms of the physical characteristics of the shoreline of those areas.

The Revolutionary Court of Iran convicted US journalist Roxana Saberi of espionage, sentencing her to eight years in prison, according to her lawyer April 18. The trial, in which Saberi was accused of passing classified information to US intelligence agencies, was conducted earlier this week in proceedings closed to the public, and news of her conviction came from press contact with Saberi's father and her lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi.