On March 26, a Border Patrol shot and killed a man who allegedly threatened him with a rock in Calexico, California, on the border with Mexico. The agent fired an M-4 assault rifle at the man, who was apparently trying to evade arrest and run back to Mexico. The man was pronounced dead from one bullet wound at El Centro Regional Medical Center. Pablo Arnaud Carreno, Mexico's consul in Calexico, said the victim appeared to be a Mexican man who had entered the US without permission. His name was not released. The Mexican government has asked US authorities for a thorough investigation. "It seems unjust to shoot someone who is unarmed," Arnaud Carreno said on March 27.

On the night of March 23, four young people associated with the anarchist punk fanzine Pensares Y Sentires were arbitrarily attacked, beaten and detained by police on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. The black-clad attackers, who repeatedly fired their pistols in the air to intimidate the youths, belonged to the municipal police force of Santa Lucia del Camino, the Oaxaca district where Indymedia reporter Brad Will was killed last year. The detainees were taken to the Santa Lucia del Camino jail, and released at 1:30 AM, charged with disorderly conduct. Two days earlier, they had particiapted in the ceremony and hunger strike to demand the Brad's killers be brought to justice. The detained were also members of the local Somos Resistencia collective, part of the Anarkalactica youth culture network. (Kolectivo Todxs Somos Presxs, March 24)

Speaking to supporters and the press at the opening of the second phase of the Zapatistas' "Other Campaign" in the Chiapas highland city of San Cristobal de Las Casas, Subcommander Marcos said that capitalism is provoking a "fourth world war" for control of the resource-rich lands of poor countries. He said global capitalism has entered a new phase, seeking total market control over lands, waters and even genetic resources. He cited as an example the struggle over Cerro Huitepec, a hill just outside San Cristobal where the developers of a soft-drink plant hope to mine water, with no benefit to the inhabitants of the city. He said that in the new order "national governments are mere managers, and a manager is not a director." (Notimex, March 25)

Cuban leader Fidel Castro, in his first editorial since largely disappearing from public view due to illness last year, charged US demand for biofuels directly hurts the world's poor. The article, appearing in the official Cuban newspaper Granma, was titled "Over three billion people in the world condemned to premature death due to starvation and thirst," charging that biofuel demand pushes farmers worldwide to plant fuel crops instead of food crops needed by the world's poor.

From Military Families Speak Out, March 29:

Military Families Speak Out responds to Senate vote to continue Iraq war
Today, Military Families Speak Out, the largest organization of military families speaking out against a war in the history of the United States, issued the following statement in response to the vote in the U.S. Senate to provide continued funding for the Iraq war:

Fighting continues between Pashtun tribesmen and foreign al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan's Tribal Areas. Both sides used mortars, heavy guns and rocket-propelled grenades in battles overnight in South Waziristan, following the collapse of a week-long ceasefire. Violence first erupted March 19 when a Taliban commander-turned-government supporter ordered Uzbek and Chechen militants to disarm, leaving 160 dead last week. Tribesmen March 29 seized control of a school which the Uzbeks were using as their base in Ghawakha, near Wana. At least eleven have been killed in clashes this week. (AFP, March 30)

More than 12,000 people have fled fighting in Mogadishu in the past week and a humanitarian crisis there is intensifying with aid workers unable to access the needy, the U.N. refugee agency said on March 30. Dozens of civilians have been killed by mortar rounds and gunfire in the Somali capital, according to William Spindler of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). "There has been a steady outflow from Mogadishu," he told a news conference, estimating 57,000 people have been uprooted by the conflict since the beginning of February.

Two suicide bombers killed 76 people in a crowded market in Baghdad's Shi'ite Shaab district March 29, as three suicide car bombs exploded within minutes of each other in Khalis, a Shi'ite town north of the capital, killing 53 and wounding 103. (Reuters, March 30) A bomb planted under a parked car also tore through a market in Baghdad's mixed Al-Bayaa district, killing three and wounding 26. And a car bomb exploded near a Shi'ite mosque in Mahmoudiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad, killing six persons and wounding 19. (AP, March 29)