Baitullah Mahsud, an al-Qaida ally who leads the Taliban in Pakistan, pulled out of a peace deal with the government after it refused to withdraw the army from tribal lands on the Afghan border. Tribal elders in Pakistan's South Waziristan region have been trying to broker the deal. Mehsud has been accused of masterminding a wave of suicide attacks that have rocked Pakistan since mid-2007, including one that killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (though Mehsud has denied involvement) in December. The peace talks were aimed at making permanent a five-week lull in a wave of suicide attacks that has killed more than 1,000 people in Pakistan since the start of 2007.

Clashes continues for a second day in Beirut and the Bekaa Valley May 8, pitting Hezbollah against the Sunni and pro-government Future Movement. Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah charged the government with crossing a "red line" by challenging the independence of the resistance movement.

On May 6, 480 Palestinian Authority police entered the city of Jenin to crack down on criminal gangs and Islamic Jihad cells, under the rubric of the Israeli-approved and fashionably euphemistic "Operation Smile and Hope." Clashes with presumed Islamic militants broke out in the outlying town of Qabatiyah. (LAT, May 7) The following day, Israeli forces occupied the city and refugee camp of Jenin. Major General Diab Al-Ali (AKA Abul Fatah), commander of the PA's National Security service in the northern governates of the West Bank, said the Israeli incursion is meant to obstruct the Palestinian security services' plan to impose law and order, and is a provocation against the Palestinian government and people. (Ma'an News Agency, May 7)

On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day and a week before Israel marks its 60th Independence Day, a group of over 100 prominent British Jews issued a letter proclaiming, "We're not celebrating Israel's anniversary," citing the dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians. Among the signatories are Prof. Haim Bresheeth of the University of East London, who organized the call for an academic boycott of Israel; playwright Harold Pinter; attorney Daniel Machover, who filed a lawsuit against Maj. Gen. Doron Almog, and actor Stephen Fry.

Eight thousand pages of documents related to the Pentagon's illegal propaganda campaign, known as the Pentagon military analyst program, are now online for the world to see, although in a format that makes it impossible to easily search them and therefore difficult to read and dissect. This trove includes the documents pried out of the Pentagon by David Barstow and used as the basis for his stunning investigation that appeared in the New York Times on April 20, 2008.

At least eight people were killed and 13 injured May 6 as US aircraft bombed positions of the Mahdi Army militia in Baghdad's Sadr City. (DPA, AP, May 7) Civilians are fleeing Sadr City, but the fighting is spreading beyond the enclave. A rocket slammed into Baghdad's city hall and another hit a downtown park. (AP, May 7) Iran says it will not hold a fourth round of talks with the US on security in Iraq, as long as US forces continue what it called "open bombings" of Shi'ites. (VOA, May 5)

In 1994, the first year of Rudolph Giuliani's initial term as mayor of New York, 3,400 people were arrested for marijuana possession in the city's five boroughs. By 2000, that number had swelled to 51,500. This period and the ensuing years, which have seen a continuation of this policy under Mayor Michael Bloomberg—39,400 people were arrested in New York for pot last year—has been officially dubbed the "Marijuana Arrest Crusade" by Harry G. Levine and Deborah Peterson Small in a thusly-named report, subtitled "Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City 1997-2007."

On April 28 Mexico's Federal Conciliation and Arbitration Board (JFCA) ruled in favor of a nine-month old strike at Grupo Mexico's giant copper mine at Cananea, in the northwestern state of Sonora. The ruling, which is final, makes the job action legal. Previously the JFCA had ruled against the strike—which was started by the National Union of Mine and Metal Workers of the Mexican Republic (SNTMMRM) over safety issues on July 30—and the government sent troops to the mine in January. Grupo Mexico must now end the partial operations it was carrying out at the mine. (La Jornada, April 29) On April 24 the company had threatened to close the facility, as it is reportedly doing in the San Martin mine in Zacatecas. (Mexican Labor News and Analysis, April 2008)