The May 3 attempted hijacking at the Havana airport by two conscripts who killed an officer they had taken hostage may have been a CIA-sponsored adventure, or merely evidence of desperation to get out of Cuba. (A month earlier, three men who tried to hijack a boat with passengers were condemned and summarily executed.) (DPA, BBC, May 4) But given that Luis Posada Carriles was a CIA asset when he carried out his terror campaigns against Cuba (and Nicaragua), its is pretty funny to hear these Capitol Hill anti-Fidelistas accuse Cuba of being a "state sponsor of terrorism." How do they keep a straight face? From UPI May 4:

We've noted speculation that the paramilitary scandal in Colombia will do in Bogotá's prospects for a free trade deal with Washington. When Uribe was in Washington yesterday to petition for the deal (and continued economic and military aid), he was dressed down by Democratic lawmakers. But note the implicit promise of capitulation in the final line of this May 3 Reuters report:

Sudan and Chad are to co-operate with the African Union (AU) and UN in an effort to stabilize the troubled Darfur region. As part of the agreement signed in Saudi Arabia, a joint border force is to be created and observers assigned to the region, while both parties have also pledged not to aid one another's dissident movements. [BBC, May 4]

First-time author Margaret Ajemian Ahnert's May 1 appearance at a Barnes & Noble store on New York's Upper East Side to promote her new memoir on survivng the Armenian genocide, The Knock at the Door, was disrupted by hecklers who shouted and passed out leaflets denying the genocide occurred. One was arrested.

From Human Rights Watch, May 2, via AllAfrica.com:

A criminal court in Cairo today sentenced Huwaida Taha Mitwalli, a journalist for Al-Jazeera and the London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi, to six months in prison on charges of "possessing and giving false pictures about the internal situation in Egypt that could undermine the dignity of the country" in connection with an Al-Jazeera documentary she made about torture in Egypt. The court also fined her 20,000 Egyptian pounds (US$3,518). An Egyptian national, Taha is currently free on bail in Qatar, pending appeal.

The Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella insurgency group consisting of various jihadi factions including al-Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement May 3 denying the killing of its "emir," Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, but confirming the death of its official spokesman, Abu Abdullah al-Jabouri AKA Muhareb al-Jabouri. US military officials announced the death of Muhareb Abdul Latif al-Jabouri in a raid in Western Baghdad; however, the Iraqi Interior Ministry alleged that Jabouri was also the identiy of Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. The Islamic State of Iraq insisted on the difference between the two individuals, and assures that the "Emir of the Believers" is alive. The statement says if he was killed, they would not hesitate to announce it as the "flag of our jihad can only rise by the blood of the leaders before the soldiers, and the tree of victory can only be watered by the blood of the martyrs."

Tehran has expelled tens of thousands of Afghans from Iran since mid-April, with authorities saying they will repatriate 1 million unregistered Afghan refugees over the next years. The UNHCR says it is powerless to intervene as those being forcibly repatriated are not legally registered refugees. But several repatriated Afghans told RFE/RL that Iranian authorities had confiscated and destroyed their registration cards before expelling them from the country. But Afghans affected by the campaign claim that even legally registered refugees are being forced to leave. They say those who remain in Iran face pressure that makes it difficult for them to survive. Kabul's Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta said Iran should immediately stop repatriating large numbers of Afghans because Afghanistan does not have sufficient resources to help them resettle. (RFE/RL, May 3)

A court in Tashkent convicted Umida Niyazova, a human rights activist of distributing Islamic extremist propaganda, and sentenced her to seven years in prison May 1. Niyazova, who was a translator for based Human Rights Watch and wrote for independent online publications, was convicted after a two-day trial that journalists and international monitors were prohibited from attending. Amnesty International calls her a prisoner of conscience.