Gee, good thinking, science geeks. There's too much junk in the atmosphere...so let's throw even more junk into the atmosphere. Anything to avoid fat Americans having to give up their precious automobiles. From AP, April 24:

Using chemicals to cut global warming may damage ozone layer
WASHINGTON — The rule of unintended consequences threatens to strike again. Some researchers have suggested that injecting sulfur compounds into the atmosphere might help ease global warming by increasing clouds and haze that would reflect sunlight.

On April 20 a bomb exploded outside the offices of Spain's ruling Socialist party in the Basque town of Elgoibar (Guipúzcoa province), causing considerable damage but no injuries. Police said the blast followed a telephone warning in the name of the armed separatist group ETA. (AP, April 20) While the attack made some international headlines, there was little note that it came one day before a trial opened against 27 members of Basque pro-amnesty organizations on charges that they are ETA fronts. The 27, members of Askatasuna, Gestoras Pro-Amnistía, Behatokia and Senideak, refused to respond to questioning by the Spanish prosecutor. The case stems from an eight-year inquiry by Baltasar Garzón, Spain's leading anti-terror investigator. (EiTB24, April 21)

Thousands marched in Yerevan April 24, the 93rd anniversary of the start of the mass killing campaign of at least 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. More than 10,000, mostly youths and students, carried torches and candles, demanding Turkey join several other countries around the world in officially recognizing the massacres as genocide. After burning a Turkish flag in Yerevan's Freedom Square, participants marched to a monument to the victims of the genocide, where they laid wreaths and flowers. Many carried flags of the 23 countries whose governments or parliaments have recognized the killings as genocide, including Canada, France, Switzerland and Poland.

Officials in Georgia are seeking to use the alleged downing of a Georgian reconnaissance drone by a Russian warplane to build international support for reducing the Kremlin's "peacekeeping" role in the separatist enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia's Foreign Ministry asserts that a Russian MIG-29 shot down the Georgian Interior Ministry drone off the Black Sea coastline of Abkhazia April 20. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili says the drone's final video footage provides "clear proof" of a Russian violation of Georgian airspace.

Agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interviewed a number of Puerto Rican independence activists in a coordinated operation on April 16 at their homes in San Juan, Yauco, Penuelas, Bayamon and Guaynabo. The activists included Tania Delgado, Miguel Sanchez and Miguel Viqueira. The agents "tried to interview Miguel Viqueira and Tania Delgado on their activities as independence supporters" and asked if they knew about actions by the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros, according to attorney Alvin Couto.

After an eight-month strike, the Grupo Mexico mining company has started to shut down its San Martin copper, silver and zinc mine in Sombrerete municipality in the central Mexican state of Zacatecas, according to Jesus Jiménez, a delegate in Zacatecas and Jalisco for the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM). Jiménez said the company has already terminated 100 of the mine's 450 workers on a claim that the mining operation was unsustainable. The workers went on strike on July 30, 2007, as part of a strike over safety conditions that included the huge copper mine in Cananea, Sonora, and a mine in Taxco, Guerrero. Grupo Mexico has reportedly lost $120 million in revenues at San Martin since the strike began. (La Jornada, April 18)

According to the US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN), the Northern Block of the Black Eagles, a rightwing paramilitary group, has threatened three activists in Tiquisio, a community in the northern Colombian department of Bolivar. The threat names Father Rafael Gallegos, Marta Lucia Torres and Said Echevez, members of Citizens Process for Tiquisio, and mentions their opposition to the "democratic security" policies of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Velez. The government is promoting development of the area around Tiquisio by AngloGold Ashanti, a South African-based multinational gold mining company. CSN charges that the paramilitaries are seeking to force campesino communities off their lands "to make them available for the multinationals to extract gold."

Former Roman Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo won an historic victory in Paraguay's presidential election April 20, ending the long rule of the conservative Colorado party with a mandate to help the nation's poor and indigenous. Winning 41% of the vote to Colorado candidate Blanca Ovelar's 31%, Lugo said he had no intention of persecuting the Colorado party. "Our government is not going to start a witch hunt," Lugo said the day after his victory. "We'll try to co-govern by seeking consensus and harmony."