Human Race

EXTRADITED: After spending two decades in a Miami prison on drug trafficking charges, former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, 76, was extradited April 27 to France where he faces money laundering charges and, if convicted, could spend another 10 years behind bars. Lawyers had pushed for his return to Panama-where he is facing even more charges. A May 12 hearing is scheduled.

APOLOGY: Two soldiers wrote the widow of an Iraqi civilian who was killed by their company: "We did unto you what we would not want done to us." The members of Bravo Company 2-16 wounded two children and killed two Reuters journalists among Iraqis in a July 2007 attack. Soldier Ethan McCord wrote in the letter that he "saw the faces of his own children back home" when he pulled the wounded children from the van their father was driving to assist the wounded.

Wikileaks released a video of the incident in early April. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC the video "doesn't show the broader picture of the firing that was going on at American troops" and he thinks the video "should not have any lasting consequences." The widow of the Iraqi driving the van told The Times in the United Kingdom that she accepts the men's apology because they saved her children.

MURDERED: Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN) journalists Nathan S. Dabak, 36, and Sunday Gyang Bwede, 39, died April 24 after Muslim gang members ambushed and stabbed them to death. Pandang Yamsat, president of COCIN, told Compass Direct News the perpetrators "have been using the hand phones of the deceased journalists and boasting that they are the ones that killed them." They were the latest attacks on Nigerian Christians ("Boiling point," April 10) as government transition begins in the wake of President Umaru Yar'Adua May 5 death. Suspected Islamic extremists also kidnapped and murdered COCIN pastor Ishaku Kadah, 48, and his wife Selina, 45.

DERAILED: California teen Abby Sunderland's quest to become the youngest person to sail nonstop around the world alone ("Sister act," Oct. 24, 2009) came to an end April 24 after the 16-year-old announced she needed to pull into Cape Town, South Africa, to repair a faulty navigation system. Sunderland, sister of Zac Sunderland who last year at 17 became the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe alone, was halfway through her voyage and says she intends to finish, record or not.

RELEASED: Thomas Hagan, the only man to admit a role in the 1965 assassination of former Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X, was paroled from prison April 27. Although two other men were convicted and sentenced with Hagan, he has maintained their innocence and both were paroled in the '80s. Hagan, 69, told the parole board he has "deep regrets" about shooting the civil-rights activist.