Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez April 30 defied the request of his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe to help catch FARC guerrillas that apparently killed eight Colombian soldiers and then fled to Venezuelan territory. Chávez said he had been "very clear with President Uribe and with Colombia: we do not support the Colombian guerrillas...but it is also not our war, it is Colombia's war." He added: "We will not interfere in that war. And there is no point in any kind of pressure. This is what President Uribe knows and what Colombia knows very well."

Seventeen people were arrested on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao for involvement in a drug-trafficking ring with connections to Hezbollah, the police there said April 29. The suspects, detained the previous day, included four people from Lebanon and others from Curaçao, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, the police chief, Carlos Casseres, said. Some of the proceeds, funneled through the Middle East, went toward supporting groups linked to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Casseres said. The ring is also accused of forwarding requests from Lebanon for arms to be shipped from South America. (AP, April 30)

A judge for the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) has ordered the release of four generals who had been held on suspicion of their involvement in the February 2005 suicide bombing that killed former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri and 22 others. The court's pre-trial decision came after prosecutor Daniel Bellemare announced Monday that he was declining to seek a continuation of the generals' nearly four-year detention because of a lack of evidence and due to the legal principle of presumed innocence. The generals' release was celebrated with cheers and fireworks throughout Beirut.

Accused al-Qaeda operative and former "enemy combatant" Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri pleaded guilty April 30 to charges of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization after reaching a plea agreement federal prosecutors that may send him to prison for 15 years. Prosecutors said that al-Marri, a "sleeper operative" for al-Qaeda who arrived in the country on September 10, 2001, will admit to conspiring with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to plan attacks on the US.

The right-wing hate circuit is reaping a windfall from the "Swine Flu" (Influenza A/H1N1) scare. Live links for each of these outbursts are provided by Associated Content, May 1:

Take for instance talk radio hosts Michael Savage and Jay Severin. Savage told his audience that people should have "no contact anywhere with an illegal alien."

Turkish warplanes again bombed PKK strongholds in northern Iraq on April 29 and 30 Anakara said. The new strikes targeted positions in the Zap and Avashin-Basyan region of Iraq's Kurdish autonomous zone, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) said in a statement on its Web site. "The targets ... have been hit effectively and with full accuracy," the statement said. There was no estimate of casualties.

Lawyers for two Guantánamo Bay detainees captured as juveniles called for their release April 29—the same day the UN Security Council held an open meeting on children in armed conflict. Lawyers for Canadian Guantánamo detainee Omar Khadr, who was 14 or 15 when he allegedly killed a US soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan, and Mohammed Jawad, who was 16 or 17 when he allegedly injured soldiers with a grenade, argued that their clients' detention violates the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict, to which the US is a signatory.

Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón announced April 29 he has decided to initiate an investigation into torture allegations at Guantánamo Bay made by four former prisoners held at the facility. Garzón said he based his decision on statements from Hamed Abderrahman Ahmed, Lahcen Ikassrien, Jamiel Abdul Latiff Al Banna, and Omar Deghayes, who claim they were subject to various forms of physical and mental abuse during their imprisonment.