Violence continues to escalate in Nepal, with 64 Maoist guerillas reported killed in a gunbattle with security forces in western Rukum district April 14. (Reuters, April 14) A page 3 story in the New York Times April 12 notes that thousands have fled across the border to India in recent weeks, and that vigilante groups are beginning to emerge to hunt down guerillas and their sympathizers in rural villages. At least 50 are confirmed killed in vigilante violence, mostly hacked to death. The Times strongly implied a government hand in creating the vigilante groups. "We have a feeling that the people want to fight against the terrorists," King Gyanendra's deputy, Tulsi Giri, said in an interview in Katmandu. "Perhaps there will be mass uprisings organized against them, plus military action as well." (NYT, April 12) Days earlier, Nayan Bahadur of Nepal's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) told Reuters some 500 homes of suspects guerilla sympathizers have been burned down in the vigilante terror. (Reuters, April 7)

Following the conviction of Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian immigrant who had been denied an asylum plea, of plotting ricin attacks in London, Britain's Labor government is under attack for supposedly lax immigration policies. The Tory opposition is charging that Bourgass should have been deported immediately upon denial of his asylum claim. Labor, in turn, says its plan to issue national ID cards will prevent such future failures to snare would-be terrorists. Bourgass is already serving time for killing a police detective during his arrest in Manchester in 2003. His north London apartment was simulatenously raided. Authorities say the seemingly innocent items found there--like cherry stones and castor beans--are sinister in light of ricin-making recipies also found. (CNN, April 14)

There is a sleazy underside to what is being protrayed as an important step towards peace in Asia. Visiting New Delhi, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao signed an agreement with India to resolve border disputes dating to the Sino-Indian war of 1962, in which China seized a contested stretch of the Himalayas known as Aksai Chin. Geographically a part of Kashmir (itself contested by India and Pakistan), Aksai Chin is strategic to China not only because it controls a pass through the mountains which could serve as an invasion route, but (perhaps more importantly) because it straddles both of western China's restive internal colonies: Tibet and Xinkiang. Delhi and Beijing have remained at odds over the territory since the brief war, and only restored direct air links in 2002. (See CNN, May 24, 2002)

"Crouching Tiger, Swimming Dragon," an op-ed in the April 11 NY Times by Nayan Chanda, former editor of Far Eastern Economic Review, notes with alarm that Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao last week signed a deal in Islamabad for construction of a deep-sea facility at Pakistan's Indian Ocean port of Gwadar. Although it is ostensibly to be built for trade, Chanda fears "a permanent Chinese naval presence near the Srait of Hormuz, through which 40 percent of the world's oil passes." It all gives the historically astute Chanda an uneasy sense of deja vu.

Synchronicity? Just days after WW4 REPORT cited a rare news report on persecution of the Yazidis (also rendered Yezidis or Ezidis), an obscure and ancient religious sect in eastern Turkey and northern Iraq, the Washington Post actually runs a story on them.

The most prominent separatists in Italy have long been the right-wing Lega Nord, who want to create an independent state called "Padania" in the prosperous Po Valley (yet are, ironically, part of Italy's ruling coalition). But now word comes of a separatist movement in an impoverished (by European standards) corner of Italy, with an apparent ecological sensitivity as well as an antipathy to the ruling oligarchy.

In response to a high-profile petition by historians, C-SPAN canceled its planned broadcast of a speech by David Irving; instead it aired a program (on April 3 and April 4) in which Book TV executive producer Connie Doebele admitted it was wrong to plan to "balance" Deborah Lipstadt's lecture with Irving, and expressed regret; and presented brief excerpts of Irving's remarks with a commentator describing him as a Holocaust-denier, rather than uncritically presenting his speech, as it had originally planned. (US Newswire, April 4)

From the AP, April 1:

Washington - The government requested and won approval for a record number of special warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies, 75 percent more than in 2000, the Bush administration disclosed Friday.

Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella revealed the figure in an annual report to Congress. Last year’s total of 1,754 approved warrants was only slightly higher than the 1,724 approved in 2003. But the number has climbed markedly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as authorities have moved aggressively against terror suspects. In 2000, there were 1,003 warrants approved under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.