The US Coast Guard announced the interception of a so-called “narco submarine,” while in a joint patrol of Caribbean waters with the Honduran armed forces. Four crew members were detained with 7.5 tons of cocaine.
Mexican government and university researchers warn that some 200 species in the deserts and mountains of northern Chihuahua state are being pushed to extinction by droughts and other extreme weather events linked to climate change.
As promised, Egypt’s self-declared “Salafists” marched en masse on Tahrir Square, where secular opposition groups were holding a thousands-strong rally. No violence was reported, but the Salafists were clearly vying with the secularists for control of the square.
The latest round of UN-brokered Western Sahara negotiations between Morocco and the Polisario Front ended without agreement—as Rabat signed contracts with foreign oil companies to explore in the occupied territory.
Rep. Peter King claims Somalia’s Shabab insurgents are aggressively recruiting in the US, while The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill claims the CIA has established secret prisons in Somalia where suspected Shabab collaborators are detained.
Communities affected by mining in Peru’s Andes issued a “Declaration of Huancayo,” demanding a new constitution guaranteeing the rights of the country’s indigenous peoples and establishing the “agricultural character of our country, and not the mineral.”
Speaking before a conference of campesina women in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales said he fears a US plot to frame him for a drug offense—as his government enters into a counter-narcotics pact with the United Kingdom.
A UN fact-finding team finds fuel, food and medicine shortages in Tripoli. Qaddafi meanwhile accuses NATO of bombing civilian targets, while NATO accuses Qaddafi of using civilian infrastructure for military purposes.
Canadian oil company Pacific Rubiales reached a deal with striking workers following a month of labor unrest in Puerto Gaitan, Colombia, that culminated this week in a blockade of the oilfields and riots in which several vehicles were destroyed.
Frustrated by slow progress in determining the fates of missing loved ones, relatives of ten men from southern Mexico who vanished on the US border have embarked on a hunger strike and public protest.
Days before a new administration in Lima is to take power, Peru’s indigenous affairs agency proposed new regulations to allow oil exploitation within rainforest reserves established to protect indigenous groups in “voluntary isolation.”
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem finds that more than 800 Palestinian youths under the age of 18 charged with throwing stones in the West Bank over a six-year period have been imprisoned—while imprisonment of minors is illegal in Israel.
