Oil from a tanker ship stuck on a reef has started to wash up at New Zealand’s popular Mount Maunganui beach. In a race to avert disaster, salvage teams are pumping oil from the leaking ship, ahead of forecast gale-force winds and swells.
Riot police in Tunis used tear-gas to disperse hundreds of young Islamists who fought back with stones, knives and sticks. At least 40 were arrested. The Islamists were protesting against the ban on women who wear the niqab enrolling in university.
Egyptian blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad has been on hunger strike for 48 days to protest his imprisonment on charges of criticizing the armed forces. HIs appeal hearing has been repeatedly postponed in what Reports Without Borders calls a stalling tactic.
At least 20 are dead after a march of 10,000 Copts on Cairo’s state TV building was attacked by stone-throwing counter-protesters. The protesters were angered by the latest attack on the Coptic Church, at the village of Merinab in Aswan.
Hundreds of Afghans marched through Kabul on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the US military campaign in their country, to condemn the United States forces as occupiers and demand the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops.
Warlords are using threats to pressure municipal officials to fraudulently prepare ownership documents for the lands that they have already grabbed in Afghanistan’s northern Baghlan province, the mayor of Pul-i-Khumri protested.
Peru leased its first five oil contracts since passing a law designed to protect the country’s indigenous peoples, while Bolivia has unveiled an investment fund through which the Guaraní people will access proceeds from local oil development.
Thousands of protesters returned to Madrid’s central square, the Puerta del Sol, as students, parents and teachers joined in a massive march against education spending cuts by the Spanish capital’s provincial government.
Authorities in Peru say National Police rescued 293 women from sexual exploitation in raids in the country’s Amazonian region of Madre de Dios. Four were arrested in the regional capital Puerto Maldonado on human trafficking charges.
Noel Salgueiro Nevarez AKA “El Flaco” (Skinny), the Sinaloa Cartel’s top boss in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, was captured by army troops in Culiacán. But the cartel’s maximum boss, “Shorty” Guzmán, remains at large.
Earth’s protective ozone layer above the Arctic was pierced by a hole of unprecedented size last winter and spring caused by a long cold period in the stratosphere, according to new NASA research published in the journal Nature.
Elite forces from Chile’s Special Police Operations Group (GOPE) invaded the Mapuche community of Wañako Mellao, firing at and terrorizing residents, after a group of Mapuche men occupied a local timber camp on traditional indigenous lands.
