Afghan and Pakistani forces clashed and bombarded each other's border posts over the weekend, leaving 12 people dead. The fighting has been described as the worst in decades between the two prickly neighbors. Pakistani officials claim that the fighting was prompted by a misunderstanding between an Afghan and a Pakistani border post. Both governments and US and NATO representatives have met to resolve the dispute. [AFP, May 14] Despite the political intervention, three American and two Pakistani soldiers were wounded in subsequent firing that allegedly came from the Afghan side. [Reuters, May 14]

After initially denying reports of his death, Taliban spokesmen have now confirmed that Mullah Dadullah, their most public and prominent leader, has been killed in clashes with Afghan and Nato forces in the southern province of Helmand. [Al Jazeera, May 13] Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban's military commander, had a bloody reputation earned through numerous alleged atrocities, including most famously the massacre of Hazaras – a Shia minority group – in the province of Bamiyan eight years ago. [The Telegraph, May 15]

Gamaliel López Candanosa and Gerardo Paredes Pérez, two journalists with Mexico's national network TV Azteca in Nuevo León, have been "disapeared" for the last four days, the network says in a May 14 statement. "The atmosphere of violence generated in recent months in the metropolitan area of Monterrey has provoked various speculations about their whereabouts, but nothing is confirmed," said TV Azteca's regional director Luis Padua at a press conference. "The only thing which is certain is that the reporters have not arrived at their houses or shown up at work." Gamaliel López generally covered urban development issues, but in July 2006 he was assigned to cover the finding in Monterrey of a severed human head with a threatening note from a narco gang. (Milenio, May 14)

Downtown San Salvador was rocked by clashes between police and protesters May 12 after authorities tried to clear the stalls of street merchants who were peddling pirate CDs and other contraband. The elite riot squad, the Unit for the Maintenance of Order (UMO), was called to the scene as street merchants burned tires and hurled stones at police, in what President Elías Antonio Saca called "acts of terrorism." Seventeen people were arrested and a general evacuation of the downtown area was ordered. (Diario CoLatino, May 14)

At least 61 Haitian migrants drowned after their boat capsized as it was being towed by a police vessel near the Turks and Caicos Islands, a British overseas territory about 125 miles north of Haiti, in the early morning of May 4. Officials said about 160 people were crowded on to the 25-30-foot Haitian sloop and that 78 were rescued; about 30 people are missing and presumed dead.

A federal grand jury in Newark, NJ, has been investigating charges that Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles masterminded the bombings of hotels in Cuba in 1997 that resulted in the death of one Italian-Canadian tourist. The Miami Herald revealed on May 3 that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cuban government have been cooperating to an unusual degree on this investigation, with FBI agents traveling to Havana in the fall of 2006.

According to government figures, nearly 2,000 current and former employees of two sugar mills in the Chichigalpa region of northwestern Nicaragua suffer from chronic renal insufficiency (CRI), a fatal kidney disease. While the cause remains a mystery, a workers group puts the death toll at more than 560 employees of one of the mills alone over the past 30 years. Residents point to the chemicals used in sugar-cane fields at the San Antonio and Monte Rosa mills, which produce most of Nicaragua's sugar exported to the US. The mills deny responsibity, and say workers who sued the companies presented no scientific evidence.

Jo Tuckman in Mexico City writes for The Guardian, May 12:

Man in the mask returns to change world with new coalition and his own sexy novel
A bead of sweat is visible through the eyehole of his famous black balaclava. Latin America's most celebrated living rebel must be feeling the heat, but a glass of water would mean taking off the mask and that is out of the question. He makes do with a puff on his pipe, and a subject that is close to his heart.

"My new book's coming out in June," Subcomandante Marcos announces with relish during the first interview he has given to a British paper in years. "There's no politics in the text this time. Just sex. Pure pornography."