From Newsday, April 8:

Two hit-and-runs in two different boroughs
A pedestrian in Manhattan and a motorcyclist in Brooklyn were each critically hurt after hit-and-run drivers struck them Saturday, police said.

An Ethiopian judge dismissed charges of attempted genocide and treason against 111 people arrested after 2005 election protests. Among those cleared were journalists and publishers. Amnesty International called the charges "absurd," and adopted the accused as "prisoners of conscience." The accused maintained the trial was political and all but two refused to co-operate. They had been in custody for 15 months, and one is a female journalist who gave birth in prison. Several opposition leaders remain in custody, accused of trying to violently overthrow the government.

Three months after the White House successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea over that country's nuclear test, the Bush administration "allowed" Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from Pyongyang in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, the New York Times reported April 8, citing unnamed US officials. The US allowed the arms delivery to go through in January, as Ethiopian troops were in the midst of an offensive against Islamist militias in Somalia. The account said the US was trying to "wean" Ethiopia off its longstanding reliance on North Korea for cheap Soviet-era military equipment.

Thousands of Turkish troops backed by helicopters battled Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) insurgents near the Iraqi border April 8, in clashes that left 10 soldiers and seven guerillas dead. The fighting was centered in the provinces of Tunceli, Bingöl, Bitlis and Şırnak. (Zaman, April 9)

More than a dozen detainees have launched a new hunger strike at Guantánamo, and the military has responded by starting to force-feed the detainees, according to an April 8 New York Times report. Lawyers for the hunger strikers said the strike was prompted by harsh conditions at a new maximum security complex, where some 160 prisoners had been moved since December. "The reports about the conditions at Camp 6 are deeply disturbing, and holding people indefinitely without legal process or access to family is an invitation to disaster," Hina Shamsi, a lawyer with Human Rights First, told AP.

Amado Ramírez Dillane, 50, Acapulco-based correspondent for Mexico's Televisa network and host of the daily news program "Al Tanto" on local Radiorama, was shot to death near the city's main square April 6. He had apparently just left Radiorama's studio when he was gunned down. According to Misael Habana de los Santos, Ramírez's co-host at Radiorama, the journalist had received several death threats on his cellular phone prior. Habana wrote in the national daily La Jornada that Ramírez had not paid attention to the threats, and refused to inform local police.

When Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo was freed from Taliban captivity last month in exchange for prisoners, it made global headlines—if only as an opportunity to portray the Italians as weak-willed. The Afghan journalist he was abducted with was sold down the river. His beheading now barely rates a notice in the global media. From the Committee to Protect Journalists, April 9:

We certianly hope that the expressions of Shi'ite-Sunni solidarity in this story are not exaggerated—or insincere. From AP, April 10 via Turkey's Zaman:

Tens of thousands draped themselves in Iraqi flags and marched through the streets of two Shiite holy cities Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall.