An April press release from the Center for Biological Diversity:

A Deadly Toll: The Gulf Oil Spill and the Unfolding Wildlife Disaster
Last year's BP Deepwater Horizon catastrophe spilled 205.8 million gallons of oil and 225,000 tons of methane into the Gulf of Mexico. Approximately 25 percent of the oil was recovered, leaving more than 154 million gallons of oil at sea. In addition to the oil, nearly 2 million gallons of toxic dispersants were sprayed into the Gulf's waters. This did not actually reduce the amount of oil left in the ocean, but merely broke it into smaller particles, which may actually make the oil more toxic for some ocean life and ease its entry into the food chain.

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments April 19 in American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut regarding whether electric utilities contributed to global warming. The court is being asked to decide (1) whether states and private parties have standing to seek judicially-fashioned emissions caps on five utilities for their alleged contribution to harms claimed to arise from global climate change caused by more than a century of emissions by billions of independent sources; (2) whether a cause of action to cap carbon dioxide emissions can be implied under federal common law where no statute creates such a cause of action, and the Clean Air Act speaks directly to the same subject matter and assigns federal responsibility for regulating such emissions to the Environmental Protection Agency; and (3) whether claims seeking to cap defendants' carbon dioxide emissions at "reasonable" levels, based on a court's weighing of the potential risks of climate change against the socioeconomic utility of defendants' conduct, would be governed by "judicially discoverable and manageable standards" or could be resolved without "initial policy determination[s] of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion."

Syria's government passed a draft decree to lift the emergency law and a bill to dismantle the Supreme State Security Court on April 19. The government also approved a third bill to "regulate the right to peacefully protest." Syrians nonetheless took to the streets in large numbers again the next day in the central city of Homs, where activists say more than 20 protesters have been killed this week by soldiers and irregular forces. Demonstrations were also reported in Aleppo, Syria's largest city. (Reuters, CNN, April 20; AlJazeera, April 19)

A Tunisian court on April 19 dropped charges against a police officer who incited protests in several Arab countries when she allegedly slapped a local fruit vendor. Police woman Fedia Hamdi was accused of slapping Mohamed Bouazizi in December in a dispute during which Bouazizi's cart was confiscated after he was allegedly found without a permit. As a result of the encounter, Bouazizi set himself on fire in front of the governor's office on Dec. 17 and died three weeks later. Pro-democracy protesters generally discontented with unemployment, corruption and repression staged several demonstrations following Bouazizi's death. The mother of the late vendor withdrew her complaint against Hamdi, and the Sidi Bouzid Court of First Instance subsequently dismissed the case.

Italy's government on April 19 announced it is indefinitely suspending plans to build the country's first nuclear power plants—ahead of a June referendum on the nuclear development plans, which the administration says is no longer necessary. "The program had been halted in order to acquire more scientific evidence," the government said in a surprise clause inserted in the text of a decree which submitted to parliament. The damage at Japan's Fukushima nuclear reactors "has imposed a pause for reflection," Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo said.

Radioactivity levels skyrocketed in the sea surrounding the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan late last week, raising fears that a new leak in the facility needs to be sealed. Radioactive iodine-131 levels hit 6,500 times the legal limit on April 15—1,100 times the previous day's readings, although still below samples taken earlier this month. "We want to determine the origin and contain the leak, but I must admit that tracking it down is difficult," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (incorrectly identified by the NY Daily News of April 16 as the "Nuclear and Safety Division").

In Buenos Aires on April 14, Argentine federal judge María Lucía Casaín sentenced Gen. Reynaldo Bignone, the last president in the country's 1976-1983 military regime, to life in prison for crimes against humanity. The judge also handed down life sentences to former military officers Santiago Omar Riveros and Martín Rodríguez, and former Escobar mayor Luis Patti, who was a police agent under the dictatorship. Another former police agent, Juan Fernando Meneghini, was sentenced to six years in prison. The 83-year-old Bignone, who was president from July 1982 to December 1983, had already been sentenced to 25 years of prison in 2010 for crimes committed during the dictatorship in the Campo de Mayo, a military camp that included four torture centers.

Workers at Nationale Communication (Natcom), a Haitian telephone company, began striking in the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area early in the week of April 11 to demand a full 36 months' salary in compensation for their impending layoffs. Dozens of workers occupied Natcom offices in Delmas in the north of the capital and in Pétionville, a wealthy suburb to the southeast.