Leave it to Bollywood. Someone actually went and did it. At least "Springtime for Hitler" was satire. This wasn't, I don't think. Yesterday I was eating lunch at one of the fast-food curry joints in Little India (Lexington Ave. in the 20s) and the song-and-dance romantic extravaganza on the video screen was a (presumably unintentionally) surreal offering called Lucky, No Time for Love, that got more disturbingly bizarre the longer I watched. It is actually set in present-day/near-future Russia, but the visual references are all straight outta the Final Solution. Near as I could tell (the dialogue is in Hindi without subtitles, tho I'm not sure that even makes much difference) it concerns a Hot Young Thing named Lucky (Sneha Ullal) and her older Prince Charming (Salman Khan), the offspring of Indian diplomats caught up in the chaos when a fascist uprising breaks out, and their struggle to escape the country as Russia plunges into civil war. They find the time to repeatedly break into spontaneous song and dance while trudging endlessly through war-ravaged snowclad landscapes and fleeing and fighting off jack-booted Russo-Nazi thugs. (Prince Charming inexplicably has all the martial and acrobatic skills of a James Bond, tho I don't think we are ever told he is a secret agent.) This trailer emphasizes the goo-goo-eyes mushy scenes and dance routines, giving only fleeting glimpses of the cheerfully grim sets that dominate the second half of the film—including concentration camps and terrified peasants being forcibly transfered to God-knows-where in cattle cars. In fact, the big climax is Lucky's rescue by Prince Charming from a sealed box-car full of deportees with long white beards, babushkas and teary-eyed children. (Hey, as long as Hot Young Thing gets away, who cares about the rest?)

In what is being hailed as a landmark decision, a 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled 2-1 that the federal Military Commissions Act doesn't strip Ali al-Marri, a legal US resident, of his constitutional right to challenge his accusers in court, and that the government must allow him to be released from military detention.

Despite recent denials by the Ethiopian regime, Der Spiegel corroborates June 11 that "terror suspects have been questioned by US officials in Ethiopia after being transferred from Somalia and Kenya. The captives included Europeans who were detained, interrogated and then released without charge." Up to 100 suspects are thought to have been transferred to Ethiopia in the process known as "extraordinary rendition." Der Spiegel spoke with Swedish citizen Munir Awad, 25, who was released from Ethiopian detainment three weeks ago. He told Der Spiegel that he had travelled to Mogadishu in December with his girlfriend Safia Benaouda, 17, also a Swedish citizen. He said that after Ethiopian forces invaded they fled to Kenya, where they were arrested by local militia, handed over to US troops and sent to Addis Ababa.

On May 28, some 200 Nicaraguan women marked International Day of Action for Women's Health with a protest in Managua to demand the decriminalization of therapeutic abortion. Dozens of vehicles formed a caravan that drove past the Supreme Court, the National Assembly, the offices of the main Nicaraguan media and the headquarters of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the party of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega Saavedra. The lead vehicle carried a poster of a pregnant woman being crucified, referring to the increase in the number of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth so far in 2007. The protest was organized by the Feminist Movement, the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) and the Association of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, among others.

On June 1 a group of Mexican soldiers opened fire on an extended family riding in a van in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. According to the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), the soldiers fired when the driver of the van, Adan Abel Carrillo Esparza, failed to obey an order to halt at a roadblock. The barrage killed five family members: Griselda Galaviz Barraza, 25; Alicia Esparza Parra, 17; and Joniel, Griselda and Juana Esparza Galaviz, ages seven, four and two, respectively. The driver was wounded, along with Teresa Flores Carrillo Esparza, 16, and Jose Carrillo Esparza, five.

As of June 6 Mexican authorities had still not arrested four suspects in the May 15 murder of environmental activist Aldo Zamora, despite pressure from Greenpeace Mexico, human rights groups and federal legislators. Four assailants ambushed Zamora and his 16-year-old brother Misael Zamora around 6:30 pm as they were driving in Santa Lucia, Ocuilan municipality, in Mexico state, killing Aldo and wounding Misael. Misael was able to identify two of the killers as people who had been engaged in illegal woodcutting in the area.

Erick Sosa Villavicencio, a leader of the protest movement in Oaxaca, was freed at dawn on June 9 from the Federal Center of Social Readaption in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. The brother of Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, director of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), Erick was arrested last Nov. 28 and charged with "illegal deprivation of liberty." He was freed for lack of evidence. However, charges of violent robbery were not formally dropped, and he could still be detained again if authorities choose to reactivate the case against him. Insisting all the charges against him were "fabricated," Sosa said, "My only crime is being the brother of Flavio Sosa." His two brothers Flavio and Horacio remain at the Federal Center of Social Readaption in Altiplano, México state. (La Jornada, June 10)

Two Colombian soldiers assigned to counter-guerilla operations in the southern part of the country were arrested June 10 for slaying six unarmed civilians, including a child, during a killing spree early the previous day. The soldiers appeared to be drunk when they entered a party held in a school in the town of San Vicente del Caguan and opened fire, killing three, witnesses told reporters. Three more victims, including a nine-year-old boy, were found shot dead near the building, the army said in a statement. San Vicente del Caguan is the site of a former "demilitarized zone" ceded to the FARC guerillas as a condition of peace talks which have now broken down. (Reuters, June 10)