Between 50,000 and 100,000 civilians are still thought to be trapped in the zone - about 20 sq km (8 sq miles) of coastal area in Mullaitivu district.
Gdn: trapped Tamil civilians killed, wounded as Sri Lankan army shells no-fire zone
The casualties' graphic accounts of a fierce onslaught on the no-fire zone, supported by the evidence of their severe wounds, have been reported by doctors who have treated them at a field hospital at Pulmoddai, inside the military area, where thousands of evacuees have been taken by ship. According to the senior doctor handling the casualties for the Sri Lankan government as they arrive at Pulmoddai, shells are falling among the tightly packed tents and shelters that are home to tens of thousands of civilians, killing and wounding dozens every day...
And last night the Sri Lankan military sources said 2,857 civilians had broken through Tamil Tiger lines and made their way to safety during the day. They added that 5,000 people had tried to escape and had come under fire from the rebels. But it was not possible to verify the reports because the military has denied access to the area surrounding the no fire zone.
Until last month the government allowed civilians injured in the no-fire zone to be taken to the larger hospital in Trincomalee, but then decreed that they must be kept inside the military area...
Most of the Tamil Tiger fighters were on the front line, he said, but some were moving among the civilians, visiting family members or moving casualties. He said Tamil Tiger police were still operating, attempting to control the crowds.
NYT: can it be compared to Srebrenica?
BBC: others arrested in Turkish coup conspiracy, now involving nearly 150
BBC: Togo also on the trail: police allegedly preempt coup attempt by president's brother
Our correspondent says relations between the two went cold when the president sacked his brother as defence minister during a cabinet reshuffle without explanation in 2007.
He adds that the family feud risks introducing an ethnic dimension between the two half-brothers as the president's mother is from the Ewe group in southern Togo, while his sibling's mother is from the Kabye people in the north.
BBC: motley crew of mercenaries allegedly plot to assasinate Morales
Three died and two were arrested in the eastern city of Santa Cruz after police fought a gunbattle with the group.
Bolivian police officials said two of the five fought for Croatian independence. The three others are said to be Irish, Romanian and Hungarian.
CSM: violence between 'yellow' and 'red' shirts in Thailand
Econ: Fiji's fun with constitutions
Fleetingly, on April 10th, Fiji’s armed forces commander, Frank Bainimarama, seemed to lose his other job as prime minister. President Ratu Josefa Iloilo announced the abrogation of the country’s constitution, the sacking of the judiciary and the postponement of elections until 2014. Calling the president’s decision deeply regrettable, Mr Bainimarama resigned and said he was heading back to barracks. Yet the next day, he and his cabinet were back in their offices, as if nothing had happened. Belying the pretence of normalcy, however, soldiers were sent into the newsrooms of the country’s newspapers, and television and radio stations to prevent “negative” publicity; several foreign journalists were booted out of the country...
The trigger for the jettisoning of Fiji’s constitution was a ruling by the Court of Appeal declaring illegal Mr Bainimarama’s interim regime, which took power in a coup in 2006. The court demanded that a neutral caretaker be appointed prime minister, pending the dissolution of parliament and a general election.
WP: violence as India votes; Maoists kill 17
The staggered, five-phase national election, which ends May 13, will cost an estimated $2 billion, with about 714 million voters. Vote-counting is scheduled for May 16, with 543 lawmakers being chosen for the lower house of Parliament. More than 6 million security and civil officials are responsible for helping to oversee the elections, and 1.3 million voting machines will be used.
The government deployed hundreds of thousands of police and paramilitary forces to guard polling stations, especially along thickly forested areas that security officials call India's "red corridor" because of the Maoist presence...
The attacks targeted security forces and polling officials, not voters. Helicopters were flown into some areas to evacuate soldiers who had come under fire. Maoists also destroyed electronic voting machines. The Maoist rebels are active in 17 of India's 28 states, and for four decades, they have been waging a low-grade insurgency that they say is intended to promote the rights of landless farmers and tribal people...
The election features three primary political alliances: the ruling, left-of-center coalition led by the Congress party; the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party-led group; and a third bloc consisting of smaller, regional and communist parties.
BBC: Muslim parties also contesting elections
More than two dozen Muslim political parties, big and small, are contesting these elections - almost double the figure of the last election...
Since India's independence from British rule, Congress has been getting a sizeable chunk of Muslim votes at national level, largely because Muslims felt they had to prove their loyalty to India in early post-partition days, experts say.
AJE: $5 billion in aid pledged for Pakistan at summit in Japan
Gdn: as Islamabad is targeting by the Taliban
CSM: breakdown of the umbrella organization in Afghanistan and Pakistan
NYT: Pakistan branches exploit class cleavage
In Swat, accounts from those who have fled now make clear that the Taliban seized control by pushing out about four dozen landlords who held the most power.
To do so, the militants organized peasants into armed gangs that became their shock troops, the residents, government officials and analysts said.
The approach allowed the Taliban to offer economic spoils to people frustrated with lax and corrupt government even as the militants imposed a strict form of Islam through terror and intimidation.
BBC: thousands have been displaced in the process
NYT: Afghan women protest harsh new law despite risks
About 300 Afghan women, facing an angry throng three times larger than their own, walked the streets of the capital on Wednesday to demand that Parliament repeal a new law that introduces a range of Taliban-like restrictions on women, and permits, among other things, marital rape.
It was an extraordinary scene. Women are mostly illiterate in this impoverished country, and they do not, generally speaking, enjoy anything near the freedom accorded to men. But there they were, most of them young, many in jeans, defying a threatening crowd and calling out slogans heavy with meaning.
With the Afghan police keeping the mob at bay, the women walked two miles to Parliament, where they delivered a petition calling for the law’s repeal.
BBC: Afghanistan to recruit thousands more police ahead of August elections
Gdn: special series on Baghdad
Gdn: and Basra
Gdn: evaluating Britain's performance there
NYT: cobbling together provincial councils
BBC: sexual violence in the US military
According to several studies of the US military funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed.
The Department of Defense acknowledges the problem, estimating in its 2009 annual report on sexual assault (issued last month) that some 90% of military sexual assaults are never reported.
AP: captives of Islamist rebels in Phillippinnes freedThe Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 fighters, has been blamed for numerous kidnappings, bombings and beheadings. It is believed to have received funds from Al Qaeda and is on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations.
AJE: 60,000 displaced Somalis have returned to Mogadishu
AJE: Somali parliament unanimously approves adoption of Sharia law; unclear how it will be enforced
Analysts say that the move to implement sharia is an attempt by political leaders to re-assert government control over southern and central parts of the country. [ceding the north to the pirates, apparently]
Slate: how to get a grip on the pirates
BBC: ...which have incredible reach
Reuters: how about sending more Dutch sailors to the scene?
random: hey, at least there's a bright side if it doesn't happen
(NYT: this can't be coincidence)
AJE: 10 JEM rebels sentenced to death by hanging for launching attack on Khartoum
Under Sudanese law, any death sentence must be ratified by both an appeals' court and the country's highest court. Then all death warrants must be signed and approved by Omar al-Bashir, the president.
"God is Great! Jem is strong! Revolution, revolution until victory!" the defendants shouted after hearing the verdict...
More than 220 people were killed when Jem fighters reached Khartoum's twin city of Omdurman, more than 1,000km from the western Darfur region where it has been fighting government forces and allied Arab militias...At least 50 other Jem fighters are already awaiting execution over the attack.
BBC: Ethiopians mobilize for release of opposition leader
[Birtukan] was among more than 100 people jailed for political offences after Ethiopia's election in 2005, most of whom have since been pardoned...
Ms Birtukan is a former judge and was one of the younger and more charismatic leaders of the coalition which did well against the ruling party in the 2005 elections.
Gdn: Human Rights Watch calls Eritrea a "giant prison"
There is no freedom of speech, worship or movement in Eritrea, while many adults are forced into national service at token wages until up to 55 years of age.
AP: Mugabe calls for reconciliation on independence day
NYT: while his thugs appear to have other ideas
...Mr. Mugabe’s lieutenants, part of an inner circle called the Joint Operations Command, know that their 85-year-old leader may not be around much longer to shield them, and they fear losing not just their power and ill-gotten wealth, but also their freedom, officials in the party said.
The recent abductions of dozens of opposition and human rights activists began in October. Many were held for weeks or months in hidden locations. Most were eventually produced in court and many have provided sworn accounts, corroborated by doctors, of being tortured to elicit confessions that they were recruiting militants to overthrow Mr. Mugabe or were involved in bombing plots.
BBC: rebel leader in Burundi demobilizes
Agathon Rwasa, of the Forces for National Liberation (FNL), gave his arms to African Union troops overseeing the peace process.
Up to 20,000 FNL rebels are due to be disarmed next week and some will be integrated into the security forces.
Econ: the aid to the DRC is as messy as the country
Rendón Herrera's organization is responsible for 3,000 killings in the past 18 months alone, said Gen. Oscar Naranjo, who directs the national police. Police said Rendón Herrera had offered his assassins $1,000 for each officer they killed, in hopes of evading arrest...
Rendón Herrera and his brother Freddy Rendón controlled an area near the border with Panama known as a major corridor for drug and arms traffickers. Before the arrival of their far-right militia, the area was dominated by leftist rebels.
The brothers were among the last paramilitary leaders to demobilize in 2006, under a 2003 peace deal that promised fighters reduced sentences and protection from extradition to the United States in exchange for pledges to renounce violence. But while his brother and other paramilitaries agreed to await justice in jail, Don Mario fled back to the jungle and rearmed, police say.
LAT: the war on drugs in Tijuana
The military also appears to be targeting symbols of narco culture. Tijuana Mayor Jorge Ramos said the military was behind the destruction late last month of five shrines in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach dedicated to folk saints such as La Santa Muerte (Saint Death), whose followers include drug traffickers.
The military's arrival in Tijuana two years ago was less than auspicious. Soldiers disarmed the city's 2,300-strong police force, long thought to be compromised by the cartels, and began rumbling down busy streets in public displays of force.
But the toll of killings and kidnappings only accelerated, as rival factions of the Arellano Felix drug cartel clashed, leaving behind scrawled threats to each other beside decapitated bodies or barrels of lye with liquefied human remains...
In November, a captured cartel lieutenant began giving up names of police officers on the payroll of organized crime. Duarte's soldiers swept down on high-ranking commanders across the city...
The police departments in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach, as well as the state police, are now run by current or former army officers.
Gone are many of the police informants, or "antennas," that supplied organized crime with intelligence and cleared the streets before cartel kidnappings and raids, U.S. and Mexican authorities say.
LAT: mayors catching the brunt of the risk
Vergara, 34, a member of the once-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, is among at least 11 Mexican mayors and ex-mayors who have been killed or have disappeared during the last 15 months. Many more have received extortion demands. Others, such as Jose Reyes Ferriz, the mayor of beleaguered Ciudad Juarez, received public death threats.
Mexico's 2,400 mayors occupy a dicey spot on the front line of the country's war on drug traffickers. They are prime targets for bribe offers because they oversee local police. And well-meaning mayors are hard pressed: Most municipal governments have skimpy tax bases from which to equip and pay police well enough to break long-standing graft...
Analysts say the rise in violence at the municipal level reflects political changes in Mexico, where the former ruling party, the PRI, has ceded the top-to-bottom control it once wielded, including over the drug trade.
Under PRI mayors, governors and presidents, traffickers largely went about their business with little trouble as long as they kept killings down and maintained payoffs to the right politicians.
But the rise of a multiparty system in Mexico during the last 20 years has upended that tacit pact.
BBC: map of the cartels' strongholds
NYT: cocaine street price up, but indicator of drug war success doubtful
BBC: Afro-Bolivians create new kingdom
King Julio is one of the many poverty-stricken Afro-Bolivians. But a few years ago he discovered that he was a direct descendant of Bonifaz, a tribal king from central Africa.
Almost two years ago he was crowned at a lavish ceremony as the first Afro-Bolivian king - a move intended to further the group's cause and gain recognition in the country's new constitution.
The original Bonifaz was brought to Bolivia as a slave in the 16th Century to work in the silver mines of Potosi.
WP: race an issue at the Summit of the Americas
AJE: Haitian senate elections upcoming; Aristide's party excluded
WP: as the country, reliant on remittances and aid, struggles to get by
Econ: Correa likely to win re-election
BBC: memories of Solidarity and betrayal
Natalia's father is 67 years old now. He won a presidential award for his contribution to Polish democracy.
"From time to time he puts on a suit and goes to meetings. He is very proud of his contribution. He jokes that he even wears his medal in bed."
But this recognition came with a bitter aftertaste. When his personal file was declassified, he discovered that close friends he had trusted had betrayed him.
Econ: political leadership (or lack of it) in post-communist statesCSM: Russia ends emergency rule in Chechnya, will withdraw half of troops
"Chechnya exists today as a kind of enclave, completely outside the framework of Russian or international law," says Tatiana Lokshina, deputy director of Human Rights Watch in Russia, who was reached by phone in Grozny. "This decision to lift the state of emergency has purely symbolic significance for the population of Chechnya. Today, the human rights abuses are committed by [pro-Moscow] Chechens rather than Russian security forces, but the atmosphere of impunity is the same," she says.
BBC: crime in Croatia
++
BBC: guernica
Army of Dude (via AM): game theory
the Onion: 'cost of living now outweighs benefits'
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