Somali police fired on a crowd of people trying to storm a food warehouse in Mogadishu June 25, killing five civilians, witnesses reported. Hundreds of people had gathered at a police station that was serving as a food distribution center, said Halima Mudey, who was in the crowd. "People were waiting for the distribution of the food, but some of them tried to storm and steal the maize and cooking oil, then police opened fire and killed five people including my brother," Abdiqadir Mohamed Ilbir said as he wept. He said his brother was shot and killed by the police. Mudey also said five people were killed. (AP, June 25)

Welcome to the promised land, Gonpo. From the New York Times, June 23 (emphasis added):

From Tibet to New York, a Youth Now Faces a Long Journey to Recovery
Gonpo Dorjee, 16, arrived in America on May 26. But he has seen little of his new home, New York City. The sights he sees most often are a small swath of the East River and part of the industrial skyline of Greenpoint, Brooklyn — the view from the window of his room at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan.

Two people were killed, including a three-year-old girl, and seven wounded June 24 when presumed leftist guerillas detonated a bomb in a tourist area of Colombia's main Pacific port, Buenaventura (Valle del Cauca department), the latest in a series of attacks over the weekend. Seven bombs or grenades exploded at commercial centers around the city and a police station in the previous attacks, which began June 22, leaving 23 injured. Authorities blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country's largest guerilla group. "This is retaliation from the FARC for the killing of one of their key leaders," Interior Minister Carlos Holguin told local Caracol Radio. "These bandits have decided to attack the civilian population and create acts of terror." (Reuters, June 24)

"Chemical Ali" Hassan al-Majid has been convicted of genocide and sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the 1988 "Anfal" counter-insurgency campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan, in which up to 180,000 Kurds were killed—some in poisonous gas attacks, some gunned down en masse at detainment camps. Majid is to be the seventh associate of Saddam Hussein to face the gallows. The location of the trial and identity of the prosecutors were secret.

A number of Sunni tribal leaders from the Anbar Salvation Council are among 12 people killed in a suicide bombing at the Mansour Hotel in central Baghdad June 25. Although the hotel is also home of the Chinese embassy and several political parties, the meeting of the Anbar sheikhs is believed to have been the target of the attack. The hotel bombing was one of five such attacks in Iraq today that killed more than 40 and injured scores. In the deadliest incident, suicide car bombers detonated outside the Baiji police station, killing 22, some 12 of them police officers. Eight people were killed in a blast in the southern city of Hilla. None of the bombings appeared to cause any US deaths. But the US military reported that one of its soldiers was killed in a small-arms attack. (BBC, WP, June 25)

Aborigine community leaders in a remote Northern Territory town set to receive the first police and army troops under an Australian federal government's plan to combat a reported wave of domestic and sexual abuse are questioning the need for "military occupation." The government last week seized control of 60 NT Aboriginal communities, including Mutitjulu, as Prime Minister John Howard declared the problem of child abuse a "national emergency."

Management of an auto parts plant operated by New York-based Alcoa, Inc. in El Progreso, Honduras, fired more than 50 union leaders and activists from June 8 to June 15, according to the National Labor Committee (NLC), a US labor rights organization. The Alcoa factory—located in El Porvenir Free Trade Zone, an industrial park for the tax-exempt assembly plants known as maquiladoras—assembles electrical wiring harnesses exclusively for export to the US-based Ford Motor Company.

Late on June 21 the US House of Representatives voted 214-203 against an amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill that would have closed the US Defense Department's Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), a combat-training school for Latin American soldiers, formerly the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). Critics say that since its founding in 1946, SOA/WHINSEC has trained many of the region's worst human rights violators.