Did you happen to notice this one? Just before last month's notorious purge of Bo Xilai, the populist Chinese Communist Party chief in Chongqing, World Bank President Robert Zoellick lectured the People's Republic that its economic model is "unsustainable," and it is in danger of falling into a so-called "middle-income trap" if it fails to reform. "This is not the time just for muddling through," Zoellick said at a late February Bejing conference. "It's time to get ahead of events and to adapt to major changes in the world and national economies." At the conference, the World Bank submitted a hefty report making policy recommendations—of course with special criticism for the state sector. (LAT, Feb. 27) Further details on the report are provided by the NY Times Economix blog March 5, via the Trade Reform website:

Two Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in Maerkang, Sichuan province, on March 30—bringing the total of protest self-immolations in little more than a year to over 30. The monks came from a monastery 80 kilometers away. When fellow clergy learned of the immolations, they set out for the city only to be blocked by police about halfway to Maerkang (known to Tibetans as Barkham). (AP, March 30) Four days earlier, Tibetan exile Jampa Yeshi self-immolated at a protest march New Delhi, ahead of President Hu Jintao's scheduled arrival in India. (NYT, March 26)

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) fighters overran a military checkpoint at al-Milah in Lahj province of southern Yemen March 31, killing 17 soldiers during an intense battle that also resulted in the deaths of 13 AQAP fighters. The AQAP militants seized two tanks and other weapons. Yemeni warplanes killed three AQAP fighters while attacking one of the seized tanks; it is unclear if the tank was destroyed. AQAP fighters fell back to the city of Ja'ar in neighboring Abyan province, one of several towns now under AQAP control. Ansar al-Sharia, or Partisans of Islamic Law, AQAP's political front in Yemen, claimed credit for the attack in text message, according to Reuters. "The holy warriors of Ansar al-Sharia this morning carried out the raid of dignity on the al-Hurur military checkpoint in Abyan, resulting in the deaths of around 30 [soldiers]," the statement said. (Long War Journal, March 31)

Reactions to the passing of Pope Shenouda III, leader of Egypt's Coptic Christians, reveals much about the country's ominous but still tentatively hopeful political situation. Compass Direct News, which documents persecution of Christians around the world, on March 23 noted the effluence of hate that spewed forth from Egypt's newly powerful Salafist movement:

On March 26, the US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in MBZ v. Clinton that the ability of a US national born in Jerusalem to list Israel as place of birth on a passport is not a political question, but remanded the case for a ruling specifically on the issue. The US State Department argued that this question was political because it informs the government's foreign policy toward recognition of Israel as sovereign over Jerusalem. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, disagreed, due to the suit being based on a statutory enactment by Congress:

It came to light in Israel last month that the Civil Administration in the West Bank has for years been covertly identifying and mapping available land, and naming the parcels after existing Jewish settlements, evidently with an eye toward expanding these communities. The new outposts are mostly "illegal" under Israeli law (although all the settlements are illegal under international law). The Civil Administration, part of the Defense Ministry, released its maps in response to a request from anti-settlement activist Dror Etkes under Israel's Freedom of Information Law. In some places the boundaries of the parcels outlined in the maps coincide with the route of the West Bank separation barrier.

With last month's Arab League summit in Baghdad, Iraq's leaders boasted that the country has emerged from instability and taken its place in the international community. But on the eve of the summit, a car bomb killed a police officer at a Baghdad checkpont, and while the summit was underway March 29, three rockets were fired around the capital. One broke windows at the Iranian embassy; another exploded on the edge of the heavily fortified Green Zone, where summit was being held. With the region's Sunni leaders suspicious of the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, only 10 leaders of the 22-member league showed up for the summit. After the summit Iraq’s fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, left the autonomous northern Kurdish region for Qatar. The Kurdish region has meanwhile again halted oil exports, accusing the central government in Baghdad of failing to make payments to companies working there in the latest escalation in the struggle for Iraq's oil. (Reuters, April 1; The National, UAE, March 31; Fox News, Reuters, March 29; CNN, March 27)