Cao Gangchuan, China's defence minister, pledged to maintain military ties with Sudan during the visit of Sudanese officials to Beijing. China has blocked efforts in the UN Security Council to dispatch peacekeepers to the violence-plagued western Sudanese region of Darfur, which has established important oil-links with China. (AlJazeera, April 3)

Eleven electricity plant workers were killed in an ambush as they drove to work in northern Iraq April 4. Police said gunmen stopped a vehicle carrying the workers near Hawija, about 70 kilometers southwest of Kirkuk, then sprayed it with gunfire. Seven of the workers died instantly; four others were fatally wounded. (Reuters via Zaman, Turkey, April 4)

Interpol issued an international arrest warrant April 3 for three Israelis accused of training illegal paramilitary groups in Colombia. Yair Klein, Melnik Ferri and Tzedaka Abraham are being sought on charges of criminal conspiracy and instruction in terrorism, facing nearly 11 years in prison if convicted, an anonymous Colombian intelligence source said. The men are accused of helping set up training camps to instruct the private armies of drug lords Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha. These armies later morphed into Colombia's right-wing paramilitaries.

Haaretz, citing Israeli military sources, reported April 2 that the Israeli Defense Forces are preparing for the possibility of a Syrian attack on the Golan Heights that will start as a result of a "miscalculation" on the part of the Syrians. The Israelis supposedly fear that the Syrians fear Israel is planning to strike Syria and Lebanon simultaneous with US strikes on Iran. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was reportedly appraised of the hair-trigger situation when he visited IDF forces in the North last week.

As Somali insurgents square off against Ethiopian and government troops in Somalia's capital city of Mogadishu, bands of pirates have been making life increasingly difficult for ships coming in and out of the city's harbour. An Indian cargo vessel was hijacked April 2, and a UAE-registered ship narrowly managed escape as it pulled into the sea April 4. (Madrid11.net, April 4)

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, April 3:

Descendants of Japanese American Internees File Amicus Brief in Support of Muslim Immigrants
Today, descendants of Japanese Americans interned during World War II filed the first of three amicus briefs in support of a Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) appeal on behalf of Arab and South Asian immigrants detained after September 11, 2001. The brief outlines the damage the internment did to their families and to the laws of equal protection in the U.S. and draws parallels between what was done to Japanese Americans during the war and the profiling of Muslim men today.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, April 2:

Supreme Court Denies Immediate Review of Guantanamo Cases
Clients May Wait Another Year in Detention Without Meaningful Way to Challenge Imprisonment
The Supreme Court announced today that it would not be hearing the cases of the Guantánamo detainees for the time being. The Court denied the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and co-counsel's motion to hear the case with three justices dissenting and two issuing a statement that the detainees should exhaust the process set up by the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), allowing for limited appeals from the decisions of military review panels, before they would consider ruling on constitutional questions. Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights expressed disappointment with the ruling.

Nine children were among 12 people killed when a suicide truck-bomber drove into a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk April 2. A further 192 were injured in the blast, and many of the victims were children from a nearby primary school. Local hospitals were overrun with the injured, many of them school children.