Reactions to the passing of Pope Shenouda III, leader of Egypt's Coptic Christians, reveals much about the country's ominous but still tentatively hopeful political situation. Compass Direct News, which documents persecution of Christians around the world, on March 23 noted the effluence of hate that spewed forth from Egypt's newly powerful Salafist movement:

On March 26, the US Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in MBZ v. Clinton that the ability of a US national born in Jerusalem to list Israel as place of birth on a passport is not a political question, but remanded the case for a ruling specifically on the issue. The US State Department argued that this question was political because it informs the government's foreign policy toward recognition of Israel as sovereign over Jerusalem. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, disagreed, due to the suit being based on a statutory enactment by Congress:

It came to light in Israel last month that the Civil Administration in the West Bank has for years been covertly identifying and mapping available land, and naming the parcels after existing Jewish settlements, evidently with an eye toward expanding these communities. The new outposts are mostly "illegal" under Israeli law (although all the settlements are illegal under international law). The Civil Administration, part of the Defense Ministry, released its maps in response to a request from anti-settlement activist Dror Etkes under Israel's Freedom of Information Law. In some places the boundaries of the parcels outlined in the maps coincide with the route of the West Bank separation barrier.

With last month's Arab League summit in Baghdad, Iraq's leaders boasted that the country has emerged from instability and taken its place in the international community. But on the eve of the summit, a car bomb killed a police officer at a Baghdad checkpont, and while the summit was underway March 29, three rockets were fired around the capital. One broke windows at the Iranian embassy; another exploded on the edge of the heavily fortified Green Zone, where summit was being held. With the region's Sunni leaders suspicious of the Shi'ite-led Iraqi government, only 10 leaders of the 22-member league showed up for the summit. After the summit Iraq’s fugitive Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, left the autonomous northern Kurdish region for Qatar. The Kurdish region has meanwhile again halted oil exports, accusing the central government in Baghdad of failing to make payments to companies working there in the latest escalation in the struggle for Iraq's oil. (Reuters, April 1; The National, UAE, March 31; Fox News, Reuters, March 29; CNN, March 27)

An Afghan soldier killed two British soldiers on a military base in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand, on March 26. The Afghan soldier was killed by ISAF troops, who opened fire on the attacker. That same day, an officer of the Afghan Local Police killed an ISAF soldier in the east of country; authorities did not release the name or nationality of the soldier, or the exact location of the attack. Afghan security personnel have now killed 16 ISAF troops this year. (Long War Journal, March 26)

A Brazilian federal judge on March 16 blocked a move to try retired army colonel Sebastiao Curio Rodrigues de Moura AKA "Dr. Luchini" for abuses committed during the country's military dictatorship. Prosecutors days earlier brought the charges over the abduction of five left-wing militants in the 1970s—the first criminal charges brought for abuses under the dictatorship. But Judge Joao Matos in Marabá ruled that the charges would violate Brazil's 1979 amnesty law. Matos said in his ruling: "To try after more than three decades to dodge the amnesty law and reopen the debate on crimes committed during the military dictatorship is a mistake." Federal prosecutors can appeal the ruling. (BBC News, March 16)

The corregidores of the Subcentral section of the Isiboro Sécure National Park Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS) in Bolivia's eastern lowlands voted March 19 to hold a new cross-country march on La Paz to oppose construction of a road through their territory. The "Ninth Indigenous March," scheduled for April 20, will protest construction of the next phase of the highway linking Villa Tunari in Cochabamba department with San Ignacio de Moxos in Beni, as well as Law 222, passed earlier this year to facilitate indigenous "consultation" on the road project. Pedro Vare, leader of the Indigenous Peoples Central of Beni (CPIB), said meetings would be held to bring more communities into the march. The Subcentral section represents 42 of the 64 indigenous communities in the TIPNIS. Vare accused the Evo Morales government of attempting to divide the territory's indigenous communities by distributing food, clothing, outboard motors and other gifts. (Erbol, March 19)

It made at least brief international headlines March 26 when Colombia's military announced it had killed 36 FARC fighters in the pre-dawn bombing of a guerrilla camp in Vista Hermosa, Meta department. Five days earlier, the armed forces claimed to have killed 33 fighters in ground fighting and air attacks in Arauca—near the area of Arauquita municipality where 11 soldiers had been killed in a FARC ambush on March 17. The claimed deaths come just as the FARC says it is preparing to free its last hostages. Armed forces chief Gen. Alejandro Navas dismissed suggestions that the military attacks could delay the releases, saying the strikes fall within the "rules of the conflict." (AP, March 26; WSJ, March 21; Secugo, March 18)