An elderly man set himself on fire in Kyrgyzstan’s southern city of Osh, the scene of repeated rival protests between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks. Labor strikes and local protests have meanwhile shut down the country’s giant Kumtor gold mine.
As the Libyan regime consolidates control over regional militias, Amnesty International warns of torture and killings of Black African detainees at militia-run camps. Fighting between Arab militias and Black Libyans continues in the country’s south.
With Sudan and South Sudan effectively at war, each are apparently arming guerillas in the other’s territory. The Geneva-based Small Arms Survey finds that the South is arming rebels in Kordofan, while Khartoum arms insurgents across the border.
Peru’s Panamericana TV broadcast an interview with the leader of the Sendero Luminoso guerillas who last week took hostage some 40 Camisea gas pipeline workers—adding further confusion to the already extremely murky affair.
The special panel charged with conducting a review of the controversial Conga mining project in Peru’s northern Andean region of Cajamarca handed its findings in to the government—as anti-mine protesters occupy Cajamarca’s central plaza.
At the Summit of the Americas, President Obama announced approval of Colombia’s supposed progress in protecting labor rights, allowing the Free Trade Agreement to take effect next month—to protests of the country’s embattled trade unions.
Revelations that Secret Service agents protecting Obama at the Cartagena summit hired local sex workers puts Colombia briefly in the news—while the four car bombs that went off during the summit barely rate a mention.
With the Keystone pipeline to the US stalled, Canada’s government is pushing a new Pacific route from the Alberta tar sands fields for export to China. But First Nations in the proposed pipelines’ path oppose both routes.
The Taliban launched coordinated attacks in the Afghan capital and three other provinces—days after hundreds marched in Faryab province to protest a NATO-led night raid that resulted in the death of a madrassa teacher.
Six days after they were abducted by Shining Path guerillas, hostage Camisea Consortium workers were freed in the rainforest of Peru’s Cuzco region—but accounts are sketchy and contradictory on exactly how the captives were released.
Much of Peru’s northern Andean region of Cajamarca was shut down in a 24-hour civil strike or paro, the latest action in the protest campaign against the US-owned Conga gold-mining project.
A group of 40 women of the Innu indigenous nation in northern Quebec have launched a cross-country march on Montreal to protest the provincial government’s Plan Nord, a mega-project that would open the north to mining and energy companies.
