April 3 - A bomb explosion in a Madrid flat kills a Spanish policeman and five terrorists suspected of responsibility for the Madrid train bombings on March 11.
April 4 - Serious fighting breaks out in Najaf, Sadr City, and Basra in Iraq as Shia insurgents supporting Muqtada al-Sadr rise against coalition forces.
Two trains carrying explosives and fuel collide in the North Korean town of Ryongchon, killing 161 people, injuring 1,300 and destroying thousands of homes.
The last coal mine in France closes, ending nearly 300 years of coal mining.
May 6 - The final episode of Friends airs on NBC, drawing an esitmated 52 million viewers in North America. Advertisers pay $2 million for 30 second ads.
May 11 - Explosion destroys a plastics factory in Glasgow, UK, killing nine people and injuring over a hundred.
May 12 - An American civilian contractor in Iraq, Nick Berg, is shown being decapitated by a group allegedly linked to al-Qaida on a web-distributed video. They state it is retaliation for the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.
The editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper in the UK, Piers Morgan, is sacked after the British army proves photographs in the newspaper, allegedly showing British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees, to be fake.
Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi visits North Korea to secure the release of the families of the nine abducted Japanese citizens returned earlier.
