Hundreds of thousands of mourners have gathered at the holy city of Touba to pay last respects to Senegal’s late spiritual leader, Serigne Saliou Mbacke, who died at the age of 92 on Dec. 28. Saliou was the last surviving… Read moreMarabout wars in West Africa?
Two suicide attacks in Iraq killed at least 56 and wounded at least 42 this week—days after the US military delivered an upbeat report on security in the country, boasting that levels of violence had dropped over the past year…. Read moreIraq: al-Qaeda strikes back?
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has claimed responsibility for the Jan. 2 suicide bombing in Algeria that killed five and injured 20. At 6:45 AM, a small truck laden with explosives drove at high speed towards a police station in… Read moreAl-Qaeda claims Algeria blast
President Mwai Kibaki’s government accused rival Raila Odinga’s ODM party of unleashing “genocide” in Kenya Jan. 2, as the death toll from violence since the disputed Dec. 27 election passed 300. “It is becoming clear that these well-organized acts of… Read moreGenocide in Kenya?
As part of a new partnership with Nicaragua’s Sandinista President Daniel Ortega, Iran and Venezuela have announced a plan to help finance a $350 million deep-water port at Monkey Point on the country’s remote Miskito Coast—envisioned as the first step… Read moreIranian Revolutionary Guards in Nicaragua to scout “Dry Canal” project?
At least four people are dead following sectarian clashes that broke out over Christmas celebrations in Kandhamal district of the eastern Indian state of Orissa. Hindu and Christian residents put each other’s homes to the torch in the Christian-dominated village… Read moreIndia: Christmas terror in Orissa —as Hindu militants gain ground
Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi is completely shut down after rioters burned dozens of cars and set fire to stores in outrage at the killing of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. All the city’s petrol stations are sealed off and… Read moreMusharraf behind Bhutto assassination?
Rodrigo Lara Restrepo, chief of the Colombian presidency’s anti-corruption program, resigned Dec. 12—days after Miami’s El Nuevo Herald reported documents showing his father, Justice Minister Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, had warned before his 1984 assassination that relatives of current President Alvaro… Read moreColombia’s Uribe linked to 1984 assassination of justice minister
Bolivia’s new constitution, which is being attacked by the lowland oligarchs as centralizing too much power in the hands of President Evo Morales, actually devolves many powers to “indigenous nations and peoples,” recognizing their right to “free determination and territoriality.”… Read moreBolivia’s constitutional crisis: rival “decentralizations”
Survivors and their supporters gathered in the mountain hamlet of Acteal in southern Mexico’s conflicted Chiapas state Dec. 22 to mark the tenth anniversary of the massacre of 45 unarmed Tzotzil Maya peasants by a paramilitary group linked to the… Read moreSurvivors accuse Mexican state at Acteal massacre commemoration
The empire strikes back—against California. From the Christian Science Monitor, Dec. 21: The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to refuse California’s request to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles is all but certain to provoke lawsuits that could tie the matter up… Read moreWHY WE FIGHT
Another development in the ongoing church-vs.-state conflict over the Orthodox patriarchate in the Holy Land, with (as ever) the struggle over West Bank lands and the future of Jerusalem in the background. From the Jerusalem Post, Dec. 19, emphasis and… Read moreGreek patriarch pawn in secret war for fate of Jerusalem?
