Three people were killed April 18 in an attack on a Turkish publishing house which prints Bibles and Christian literature, according to media reports. CNN Turk television said the victims' throats were cut and that police had detained six people in connection with the slayings at the Zirve publishing house in Malatya. TV images showed casualties being carried out of the building and one man being restrained by police. Nationalists had previously held a protest outside the publishing house, accusing it of proselytising, the Dogan news agency reported. (AlJazeera, April 18)

Violence between the Philippine army and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) continues in the southern region of Mindanao. Clashes with the 2,000-strong MNLF have left 21 dead and displaced 50,000 people. [AlJazeera, April 18] A suspected motorcycle blast has shaken the Mindanao city of Cotabato after a pro-government rally. [Reuters, April 18]

US officials in Afghanistan claim to have intercepted arms sent from Iran to the Taliban. The Bush administration had earlier accused Iran of abetting Shia death squads in Iraq, and more recently claiming that Tehran was backing both Sunni and Shia militants in the country. The allegation of involvement in Afghanistan would suggest that US strategists are bent on making the case that Iran is concertedly opposing American efforts in the "war on terror" in the region. [NYT, April 18]

Over 150 people have been killed [April 18] in a series of blasts in Baghdad, with at least 115 dying in a bombing at a food market in the [Shi'ite] district of Sadriya. The other major incident was an attack on a police checkpoint that has left at least 42 people dead. [BBC, April 18]

The massacre of at least 32 students at Virginia Tech university April 16—apparently by a South Korea-born English major, Cho Seung-Hui—is the worst such incident in US history. Many commentators point out, of course, that it came a few days short of the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine massacre. Few are pointing out that Columbine's "Trench-Coat Mafia" chose April 20 as their day to act because it was Hitler's birthday. Even fewer have noted why the days around April 20 have taken on an eerie significance in America in the past generation...

An investigation that has already exposed links between government officials and illegal paramilitary groups in six of Colombia's coastal departments has now reached the home department of President Álvaro Uribe, focusing on his administration's politically powerful allies. Colombia's Supreme Court, responsible for investigating corruption in Congress, has opened a probe into three lawmakers from Antioquia department—including Sen. Rubén Darío Quintero, Uribe's private secretary when he was governor there from 1995 to 1997. Investigators are also said to be probing Sen. Mario Uribe, the president's cousin. Quintero and Sen. Uribe both deny involvement with the paramilitaries.

The national human rights group CODHES [Council on Human Rights and Displacement] reports that more than 15,000 Colombians were displaced from their homes during the first one hundred days of 2007. The primary cause of this forced exodus has been the fighting between security forces and leftist guerrillas, while a US-led initiative of spraying narcotics crops with herbicides has also been a contributory factor. "Fumigation," notes CODHES director Jorge Rojas, "causes the expansion of coca growth into new areas," with both left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries forcibly ejecting farmers from these lands. Cocaine production comprises a major resource for both leftist and rightist combatants, while its capitalization is often thought to have exacerbated and entrenched this four-decade-old civil war. [Reuters, April 17]

From the Iraq Freedom Congress (IFC), April 15:

IFC Launches an International Campaign to Free the Iraqi Detainees Being Held In the U.S. Camps in Iraq
As a result of the new Bush security plan in Iraq, hundreds of people have been randomly detained. In fact, the plan meant to spread fear among people to preclude them from any opposition to the occupation.