Latin Americans generally used the traditional International Workers Day marches on May 1 this year to protest around national issues, but some also demonstrated their support for immigrants in the US—where tens of thousands of immigrants and supporters were marching against anti-immigrant measures and laws.

Several thousand marched in the Bolivian capital La Paz on May Day, in a militant display that incessantly shattered the air with hurled firecrackers—and some much louder explosives that might have been dynamite. While the main Workers Central of Bolivia (COB) led at the front of the march, contingents ranged from indigenists to Trotskyists to anarchists, with varying degrees of support for (or dissent from) the left-nationalist Evo Morales government. (World War 4 Report on the scene in La Paz)

In the wake of the Louisiana oil spill, Florida's Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Orlando) called for President Barack Obama to reverse his recent executive order to open up areas of the Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil and gas exploration. Nelson also introduced legislation to stop exploration in the Gulf pending an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon incident. The bill would stop the Interior Department from developing a new five-year plan for Gulf drilling and exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf. "Stop the five-year plan on drilling on the offshore continental United States until we get to the bottom of this," he told CNN April 30. (Florida Today, May 1)

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan have posted two videos since the attempted Times Square car-bomb attack of May 1. In one, a Taliban spokesman claims the botched New York attack. In the second, alleged to have been filmed April 4, TTP leader Hakimullah Mehsud promises attacks inside the US within a month. Mehsud had been believed killed in a drone attack back in January. New York police dismiss the Taliban claim, and are looking for a middle-aged white man caught on videotape near where the SUV loaded with propane, fireworks, fertilizer and timing devices was left. (CSM, ABC, May 3)

Our April Exit Poll was: "Is the new healthcare bill a small step for social justice, or big one towards corporate totalitarianism?" We received the following two rather diametrically opposed responses:

Police clashed in Athens May 1 with thousands of protesters marching against new austerity measures the Greek government is to adopt under pressure from the EU and IMF. The plan, calling for wage cuts and tax hikes, has prompted plans for a nationwide general strike on May 5, led by the civil servants' union ADEDY and the General Confederation of Greek Labor (GSEE), togethering representing some 2.5 million workers, or half the Greek workforce. The walkout will be their third joint strike against the austerity plans since the start of the year. (Press TV, May 1; CNN, April 28)

Bird conservationists fear the spreading Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will affect not only local birdlife but migratory bird populations as far north as Alaska, and as far south as South America. The spill, now 100 miles long by 48 miles wide, is being pushed onshore by the prevailing southeast winds and is expected to hit the Louisiana's Chandeleur Islands imminently.

Two people are dead and at least five missing after a paramilitary group ambushed a human rights caravan April 27 in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Beatriz Cariño Trujillo, a coordinator of the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA) and a member of the Center for Community Support Working Together (CACTUS), and Tyri Antero Jaakkola, a Finnish human rights observer, were killed when gunmen believed to be linked to the Union for the Social Wellbeing of the Triqui Region (UBISORT) attacked the caravan, which was traveling towards the municipality of San Juan Copala.