In a YouTube statement, Colombia’s FARC guerillas responded to reports that they have been weakened, and asserted that the rebels’ “struggle for a socialist Colombia” is legitimized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Ecologists say “marine bubble” technology used in offshore oil explorations is behind the mysterious dolphin die-off on the Peruvian coast. An estimated 3,000 dolphins have washed up on the coast so far this year.
Hundreds of National Police and army troops have been mobilized to Peru’s northern Andean region of Cajamarca ahead of an announced resumption of the civil strike there in opposition to the Conga gold mining project.
JosĂ© Antonio Acosta Hernández AKA “El Diego,” purported leader of La Linea criminal organization, was sentenced to 10 life terms in El Paso after pleading guilty to the slayings of three people tied to the US consulate in Ciudad Juárez.
The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), the Tuareg rebel army which has seized control of Mali’s north, declared the independence of the region—and repudiated “Islamic groupsicles” attempting to exploit the struggle.
The Kurdish opposition bloc walked out of the Syrian National Council at a meeting in Istanbul, accusing host country Turkey of "pressuring the SNC" to omit the demands of the Kurdish members in the final document outlining a transition plan.
Israeli prison authorities stormed the cells of Palestinian prisoners, leaving 61 injured. The raid in Israel’s Nafha facility came after prisoners refused to submit to forcible DNA tests. The Palestinian Authority says the tests are illegal.
South Sudan accused Khartoum April 5 both of bombing an oil pipeline near the town of Heglig, in South Kordofan state, and of trying to build an “illegal” pipeline crossing the border towards the South’s oil fields.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released the last 10 members of the security forces they were holding captive—but over 400 civilians remain held in the guerillas’ jungle camps, receiving less priority from the government.
A day after Mali’s northern city of Timbuktu fell to Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), Ansar Dine, an Islamist faction that had been cooperating with the rebels, has reportedly seized control there.
The Director of National Intelligence released a report warning that competition for increasingly scarce water in the next decade will fuel instability in the Middle East, South Asia and other strategic regions around the world.
Two Tibetan monks set themselves on fire in Sichuan province—bringing the total of protest self-immolations in little more than a year to over 30. Days earlier, a Tibetan exile self-immolated a protest in New Delhi.
