Ten Palestinians have been shot and killed in the last two years while protesting Israel's separation wall non-violently. Hundreds of protestors have been injured, including internationals and Israelis. From the ISM media office, May 14:

Non-Violent Demonstration Against the Wall in Ar-Ram Attacked by Israeli Military
Saturday 13th May: Around 800 Palestinian and 200 Israeli and international demonstrators, representing a broad coalition of people, united in a march to call for the dismantling of the Apartheid Wall in the Palestinian town of Ar-Ram, just north of Jerusalem. With the participation of schoolchildren, teachers, neighborhood residents and representatives of all the different Palestinian political parties, it was carefully prepared as a non-violent protest. It was well disciplined, with a line of organizers at the front of the march preventing any impatient youth from provoking a confrontation with the soldiers.

A national summit of indigenous and campesino organizations is meeting at the Guambiano indigenous reserve of La Maria Piendamó, along the Pan-American Highway in Cauca, southern Colombia, and has just been attacked by the security forces. At least one death is reported. From the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), via Colombia Indymedia, May 16 (our translation):

Four helicopters have attacked the summit, launching tear gas. One person is dead, more than 50 injured, 36 persons under arrest and more than 10 disappeared following the assualt by the National Army, the [National] Police and the ESMAD [elite riot squad], against the indigenous, campesinos and Afro-descendants in La María Piendamó, vereda [hamlet] El Rosal-Mondomo, in Cauca.

From Ya Libnan, May 15:

Beirut & Damascus — Prominent writer and democracy campaigner Michel Kilo was detained after calling for better relations between Syria and Lebanon.

Its about out way of life, remember? From Newsday, May 15:

Fatal accident leaves grief on Mother's Day

It was a simple Mother's Day gift: Alvin Johnson was going to surprise his girlfriend of 20 years, Emma Liverman, with a homemade cake and a meal fit for such a celebration.

Not knowing his plans, she had picked him up at his Springfield Gardens home Saturday afternoon, and was making a U-turn out of a parking spot on Farmers Boulevard at 132nd Street, police said, when a passenger van carrying eight people collided with Liverman's Toyota Camry.

From BBC, May 16. Maybe this will finally shut up the conspiranoiacs. (Yeah, as if...)

Why Pentagon released 9/11 tape

A non-profit government watchdog has succeeded in getting the US to release videotapes of a plane striking the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.

The conservative group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request in December 2004, which was denied a month later, the group says.

From Ha'aretz, May 11:

Fear and loathing in Petah Tikva / Neo-Nazi gangs assaulting ultra-Orthodox Jews
A week after the desecration of the Great Synagogue in Petah Tikva, nothing remains of the horror the worshipers encountered there last Thursday when they arrived for morning prayers. The walls, which had been sprayed with swastikas and blasphemy, have been newly painted, the floor polished and the curtain covering the holy ark replaced.

We recently noted an internal shake-up in the Libyan regime that seemed to signal a tilt back to the sidelined hardliners. This seems not to have affected Washington's plans, announced today, to restore diplomatic relations. This may actually reveal something about a strategic shift underway in Washington—away from the hubristic neocons, with their ambitions to remake the world, and back towards pragmatists (typified by the Trilateral Commission) who believe in wooing recalcitrant regimes into the pro-West fold rather than overthrowing them. Note that Washington appears to be racing for Qadaffi's good graces with Hugo Chávez, who would doubtless woo Libya (and its oil) for his Third Worldist agenda...

After 63 days on hunger strike, four jailed Mapuche rights activists agreed to temporarily suspend their protest on May 14 after reaching an agreement with Chilean legislators. In exchange for an end to the fast, the government promised to give urgent attention to a proposed law allowing supervised release, introduced by Socialist Party (PS) senator Alejandro Navarro. Navarro and fellow PS senator Jaime Naranjo helped broker the agreement, with mediation from Temuco bishop Manuel Camilo Vial and from lonko (Mapuche community leader) Jose Cariqueo.