Sent to us by New York's Coalition for the Human Rights of Immigrants is this action alert in the case of two Muslim immigrant girls detained following spurious suspicion of plotting suicide attacks:

Vigil to Release Detained Youth!

Get on the Bus to York, PA on WED 5/11 for 16-year old girl's hearing

Demand the Release of Bangladeshi & Guinean 16 Yr Old Young Women Detained by Department of Homeland Security!

GET ON THE BUS from NYC to York Courthouse in Pennsylvania:
Wednesday, May 11th, for a VIGIL at the BOND HEARING of the Bangladeshi Young Woman from Queens

From VOA, May 4:

At least 14 people are now dead following an explosion that rocked a soccer stadium in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, as the prime minister addressed his supporters. The cause of Tuesday's blast is still unknown. Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi, who was not harmed, has insisted the explosion was accidental. But other unnamed Somali officials and diplomatic sources have told various news agencies the blast was an attempt to assassinate Mr. Gedi... This is his first visit to the Somali capital since he was appointed to the nation's first central government in 13 years. Mr. Gedi's tour was designed to boost support for his adminstration and end a dispute among lawmakers about where and when the Somali government, now based in Kenya, should relocate.

WHY US? (On the academic boycott)
Tanya Reinhart

Yediot Aharonot, May 4, 2005. Translated from Hebrew by Mark Marshall.

A boycott decision, like that passed by Britain’s Association of University Teachers to boycott two Israeli universities, naturally raises a hue and cry among Israelis. Why us? And why now, “just when negotiations with the Palestinians might be renewed

On the 35th anniversary of the murder of four non-violent protestors at Kent State, comes this press release from the International Solidarity Movement:

School Children Murdered by Israeli Military at Anti-Wall Protest

Beit Liqya, Ramallah, West Bank

Two cousins, 14 and 15 years old, were shot dead today by Israeli
soldiers who opened fire on a demonstration against the Apartheid
Wall in the village of Beit Liqya.

After school ended for the day students went out to protest against
the illegal Wall which is right now cutting through their homes and

Larry Franklin, the Pentagon analyst suspected of passing classified information to American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) bigs, has been arrested by the FBI. Franklin, who recently went back to work at the Pentagon, turned down goverment offers to cooperate. Previously, it was reported that the information Franklin passed to AIPAC had to do with Israeli agents in Kurdistan. Now Ha'aretz is reporting Franklin is charged with passing the lobbying group "classified information about potential attacks against U.S. forces in Iraq." If this is not a reporting error, it sounds like a potentially more serious charge. Ha'aretz also writes, maybe a little too hopefully, "Franklin's arrest indicates that the AIPAC affair may be nearly over."

That was the headline on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency website on May 3. The article continues:

Shimon Peres sided with religious activists in opposing a gay
parade planned for Jerusalem.

Israel's vice premier said in a statement Tuesday that Jerusalem
WorldPride 2005, scheduled for August, "is inappropriate as Jerusalem
is the center of three faiths, and such an event could offend the
sensibilities of religious people the world over." Sephardi Chief
Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who met Peres last week, said Peres told him he
found the annual parade in the holy city repellant, something the

From a May 3 report in South Africa's Cape Times:

Cape Town - With the rapid decline of global oil supplies, the United States is heading for an economic crash unlike anything since the 1930s. And the collapse of the dollar will affect every nation on earth.

This is the chilling warning from academic Richard Heinberg of the New College of California. Heinberg is in Cape Town, South Africa, this week to share his views on what governments and societies need to do to mitigate the imminent global crisis after world oil production peaks.

"It's too late to maintain a 'business as usual' attitude. What is required is to manage the change that peak oil will bring in a way that causes the fewest casualties. This must be done at an economic and geopolitical level, to fend off resource wars. The US invasion of Iraq is clearly a resource war," Heinberg said on Monday.

A tribal woman in India's Andaman Islands who was paid just two rupees, or four cents, in compensation for damage to her coconut groves by the December tsunami has angrily returned the check from the local government, an official acknowledged. "Naturally, she is very angry," said the official, Sailen Singh Parihar, deputy administrator of Nancowrie Island in the Andamans chain. He called the assessment "absolutely absurd" and said he had ordered a review of claims on the islands. He rejected complaints that many other survivors had also received checks for tiny sums of money from the local administration but said he would investigate. (AFP)