Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai strongly criticized the US and British conduct of the war April 25, insisting in an interview that his government be given the lead in policy decisions. He reiterated claims that Afghan villagers were bearing the brunt of US-led attacks, while the Taliban/al-Qaeda were actually based across the border in US ally Pakistan. (NYT, April 26) Two days later, Karzai narrowly escaped death when assailants opened fire on his entourage in an Afghan National Day parade, celebrating 16 years since the overthrow of the country's Soviet-backed rule. Three people were killed and some 10 injured in the attack. An MP and a 10-year-old child were among the dead, officials said. Some of the assailants have been arrested, according to authorities. (BBC, April 28; Press TV, Iran, April 27)

In the last six months, food riots in virtually every continent have made headlines, with angry protests reported in India, Mexico, Egypt, Indonesia, Haiti, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Mauritania, Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco, and the Philippines. Now impacts are being felt in "first world" countries like Japan, where food prices have risen by an average of 15% in the last year. (Nation Media, Kenya, April 24) Several Asian countries, including India and Vietnam, have halted all rice exports. (China Daily, Spril 28) The "global rice panic" has also hit the Asian-American community in California, as the retail price for a 50-pound sack of Thai jasmine rice has doubled from roughly $20 to $40 in recent weeks. (McClatchy Newspapers, April 24) Panic-buying has exhausted stocks at supermarkets in the Bay Area and Sacramento. A Costco Wholesale store in San Francisco has limited rice purchases to two bags per customer. Wal-Mart Stores' Sam's Club has limited purchases of jasmine, basmati and long-grain white rice to four bags a visit in all US outlets. (Bloomberg, April 25)

Our April issue featured the story "The Audacity of Vagueness: Barack Obama and Latin America," by Nikolas Kozloff of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Wrote Kozloff: "Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee, has not been very eager to comprehensively address Latin America as an issue. In recent years, the region has undergone a major tectonic shift towards the left, surely prompting many to wonder how the young Illinois Senator might deal with progressive change throughout the hemisphere were he elected to the White House. Would he seek to continue the rabidly hawkish stance of the Bush administration towards such nations as Venezuela, or could he be convinced to broker a rapprochement?" We have noted before Obama's alarmingly bellicose rhetoric on Pakistan. Our April Exit Poll was: "Are you rooting for Barack Obama? With or without grave misgivings?" As an Extra Credit question, we asked: "Will Cheney pull an 'October Surprise'?" We received the following responses:

Talk about chutzpah. The right-wing blogosphere is ballistic over Barack Obama's rather tenuous ties to a former member of the Weather Underground. It was Hillary Clinton who first made an issue of the fact that Obama once served on the board of Chicago's progressive Woods Fund with ex-Weatherman Bill Ayers. Hillary later pleaded ignorance when reminded that her husband pardoned one member of the Weather Underground and commuted the sentence of another. (Huffington Post, April 17) Particularly hot under the collar about the fact that Ayers has any place at all in respectable American society is Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily. After running down a litany of Ayers' and Bernardine Dohrn's rioting, bombing, travels to Cuba, juvenile rhetoric about killing your parents, etc., he fumes:

We've always maintained that anti-Semitism and anti-Arab racism are genetically linked phenomena. A lovely illustration is provided by Joseph E. DiGenova, the prosecutor in the Jonathan Pollard case, following the latest bust in the endless Israeli spy scandal—of octogenarian former US Army mechanical engineer Ben-Ami Kadish, for crimes supposedly committed back in the '80s. DiGenova uses precisely the same lurid phraseology employed against supposed Arab and Muslim terrorists. From YNet, April 24 (emphasis added):

George Bush, Felipe Calderón and Stephen Harper, in their statement emanating from New Orleans Summit on the Security and Prosperity Partnership Agreeement (dubbed the "Three Amigos" Summit) said they are "committed to democratic government, the rule of law and respect for individual freedoms," and that the US, Mexico and Canada "have shared interests in keeping North America secure, prosperous, and competitive in today’s global environment." The three leaders moved to extend the Security and Prosperity Partnership, as they did at the Montebello summit last year. (PEJ.org, April 24)

A cocaine trafficking case against Colombian rebel leader Ricardo Palmera (AKA Simón Trinidad) ended in a mistrial April 21—the second time a jury has deadlocked in a trial the US hoped would provide a symbolic victory against the FARC guerillas. A first trial ended last year with a jury deadlocked at 7-5 favoring acquittal. Palmera—who became the first FARC member to be extradited in 2004—is already serving a 60-year term on a hostage-taking charge. It is unclear whether the government will bring the drug case to trial for a third time. (AP, April 21)

At least 20 Haitians fleeing their impoverished homeland were killed when their boat went down off the Bahamas April 20, leaving only three known survivors—including an alleged migrant smuggler from Honduras, according to the US Coast Guard (AP, April 22) The news comes as World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran called soaring global food prices a "silent tsunami," warning that hundreds of millions worldwide are facing famine. (Radio Netherlands, April 23)