Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said it had begun injecting water and boric acid into Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, after detecting signs of fission which had supposedly achieved a “cold shutdown.”
Abdurraheem el-Keib—a dual US-Libyan citizen and veteran of the energy industry, described favorably as a “technocrat” by the Washington Post—was elected prime minister of Libya by leaders of the National Transitional Council.
Colombia’s DAS secret police agency was officially closed after years of scandals concerning paramilitary ties, assassinations, illegal wiretapping and corruption. DAS employees leaked hundreds of classified documents as the agency shut.
Kyrgyzstan’s newly elected president, Almazbek Atambayev, announced upon his victory that he will close Manas air base, which has been critical to the US campaign in Afghanistan, after the lease expires in 2014.
Gustavo Petro, a former leader of the M-19 guerilla movement and longtime socialist legislator, was elected mayor of Bogotá. Petro called the vote a “victory of the desire for change.” Pre-electoral violence saw 41 candidates murdered.
Risk analysis and mapping company Maplecroft released the Climate Change Vulnerability Index, examining the climate risks and adaptive capacity of 193 nations. Many of the top-listed nations are now being devastated by floods.
Mexico’s former President Vicente Fox again spoke out for drug legalization, telling a Washington DC meeting of the right-libertarian Cato Institute that prohibition bears responsibility for the horrific toll in his country’s cartel wars
The clandestine online activist network Anonymous released an Internet video demanding that Los Zetas, Mexico’s bloodiest drug cartel, release one of its members who was kidnapped from a street protest in Veracruz.
Raquel Yrigoyen Fajardo, fired as head of Peru’s indigenous affair agency, is publicly accusing the government of removing her because she annulled the agency’s approval of an environmental impact study for expansion of the Camisea gas-fields.
Growing political conflicts over development projects have prompted security forces to intervene in recent weeks in Ecuador, with military troops and campesinos in confrontations over mining and hydro concessions.
Indonesian security forces fired on an unarmed political meeting of indigenous leaders in West Papua after they issued a declaration of independence. Six people were killed, many were injured, and some 300 arrested. Six have been charged with treason.
Police fired tear gas into a crowd of several hundred protesters backing the Occupy movement who attempted to retake an encampment outside Oakland City Hall that officers had cleared 12 hours earlier using smoke grenades and arresting 75.
