Your chief blogger is a proud native New Yorker, but World War 4 Report vigorously dissents from the celebratory triumphalism around the still incomplete World Trade Center 1 finally achieving the status of the city's highest building. As we have pointed out repeatedly, apart from marring the skyline with another Fucking Ugly Building (in the straightforward nomenclature of the New York Psychogeographical Association), apart from the entrenchment of the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) economy that is expropriating the working class from New York City, apart from the insult to the 9-11 victims of office space towering over their resting place—the hubristic gesture of building the new WTC higher than the original is almost explicitly a challenge to terrorists to attack the site again, necessitating a permanent police state in Lower Manhattan. And AP's April 30 report on this dystopian "achievement" is riddled with all-too-telling errors and obfuscations. To wit:

Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called on April 30 for a new intifada to support Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, who started a mass hunger-strike two weeks ago. The Hamas premier urged Arab and Muslim nations to intervene to support detainees, in remarks at a rally for prisoners in Gaza City. The prime minister challenged human rights groups to "break their silence" and demand freedom for all Palestinians held in Israel. More than 4,000 Palestinians are currently imprisoned in Israel—around 320 of them without any charge. On April 17, marking Palestinian Prisoners Day, at least 1,200 prisoners in Israel launched an open-ended hunger strike, with prisoner groups estimating that 2,000 people are now refusing food. They are demanding improvements in living conditions, and an end to solitary confinement, night raids and bans on family visits for prisoners from Gaza. Prison authorities have responded by denying all striking inmates family visits, and separating them from the inmates not taking part in the protest. (Ma'an News Agency, April 30)

Israel's Supreme Court on April 29 ruled that buildings of the Givat HaUlpana settlement outpost at Beit El on the West Bank, ordered destroyed because of a claim by Palestinian land-owners, would receive a 60-day reprieve. The State Attorney's Office had filed the appeal on two days before, asking for a three-month delay in the scheduled demolition of the Ulpana outpost. The high court had earlier ordered the evacuation of the five apartment buildings by May 1 because they were built on land found to be private Palestinian property. Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, which helped the Palestinian claimants submit the petition against the outpost in 2008, has slammed the government for failing to raze the 30-apartment complex, which is inhabited by settler families. The stay is intended to allow time to find an "alternative solution."

From NY1, April 29:

Seven Family Members Die After SUV Plunges From Bronx Parkway
Police say seven Bronx family members spanning three generations died Sunday afternoon after the sports utility vehicle they were riding in flipped over a Bronx River Parkway railing and plunged about 100 feet onto non-public property of the Bronx Zoo.

An Islamist group calling itself "al-Nusra Front" claimed responsibility for the latest suicide bombing in Damascus—which killed 11 at the city's Zain al-Abideen mosque during Friday prayers April 27. Although it seems two worshippers were among those killed, the assailant blew himself up amid members of the security forces who were gathered outside the mosque, which is popular with Sunni opponents of the Assad regime and has gained a reputation as a launch site for protests. Scores of government troops are now routinely mobilized to the mosque on Fridays. In a statement posted on the Islamist web forum al-Shamukh, the previously unknown al-Nusra also claimed responsibility for a January suicide bombing in the same Damascus district of Midan, and other bombings in Damascus and Aleppo. It said Friday's bombing targeted the "aggressors who surround the houses of God" to attack worshippers after weekly prayers. (Reuters, April 29; IBN, Vatican Radio, April 28; NDTV, April 27)

Four explosions that rocked an eastern Ukrainian city Dnepropetrovsk April 27 injured at least 27 and have authorities scratching their heads. The usual jihadist suspects have not been ruled out. CNN's Global Public Square blog tells us: "From 2003 to 2008, Ukraine had some 1,600 soldiers in Iraq, and it is one of only two post-Soviet countries contributing troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, though Ukraine's contingent numbers less than two dozen." (Wikipedia puts the number of post-Soviet states with troops in Afghanistan at five: Ukraine, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.) "Ukraine might also have been a victim due to its close association with Russia, a country on Islamic extremists' list of enemies because of the ongoing Islamist insurgency in the North Caucasus..." But Ukrainian conspiracy theorists have been very busy over the past 24 hours concocting theories related to the country's own internal political crisis...

The Chinese firm Camc Engineering (CAMCE) was awarded the contract to build a major oil facility on Nicaragua's Pacific coast—a key project of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). The contact was announced in a Managua press conference April 27 by representatives of CAMCE and ALBA Nicaragua SA (ALBANISA). The complex to be built at Miramar outside Puerto Sandino, León department, is a centerpiece of the Venezuela-led ALBA, but has languished since being first announced in 2007. The facility will have a storing capacity of 1.8 million barrels of oil, and a processing capacity of 150,000 daily barrels. In addition to a refinery, it will include 15 tanks for fuel oil, diesel, jet-al (aviation fuel), gasoline and liquid gas. It is projected to double Nicaragua's oil intake capacity, as well as supplying other Central American nations. Venezuelan engineers will help oversee construction. (Inside Costa Rica, April 28; La Voz de Sandinismo, April 26; Downstream Today, Oct. 25, 2011)

Plans by Anglo-French oil and gas company Perenco to exploit oil deposits slated to transform Peru's economy have been slammed as a "1970s-era" project and forecast to cause huge unnecessary environmental damage to the Amazon. "The proposed 200 km long pipeline will have a 25 metre cleared right-of-way, big enough for a superhighway. There’ll be a permanent road along the entire length," says Bill Powers, chief engineer at US consultancy E-Tech International, speaking after the April 4 publication of a report he authored on oil industry best practices. "Perenco is following a 1970s-era project design format that is totally inappropriate for the Peruvian Amazon," says Powers, an expert on Peru. "The company is not proposing to use current technology to reduce impact."