Inner Asia

China: anti-mining protests rock Inner Mongolia

Chinese authorities have tightened security across Inner Mongolia province after days of unrest, which began when a Mongol herdsman was killed by a coal truck as a group of traditional herders sought to block a convoy from crossing their lands.

Palestine

Negev Bedouin pledge to resist eviction for new Jewish town

The Abu Alkiyan Bedouin clan pledge to resist their forcible relocation to make way for a new Jewish town outside Beersheba. Israel says the clan is illegally squatting state lands—although it was transferred there in 1956 by military order.

Africa

Africa: violence plagues mineral sector

Security forces killed seven when hundreds of local artisanal miners who invaded the premises of Barrick Gold’s North Mara mine in Tanzania—the latest in a series of deadly confrontations in Africa’s mineral sector.

The Amazon

Brazil: Amazon defenders slain; timber barons suspected

Local timber interests are suspected in the slaying of Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria Do Espirito Santo da Silva, two activists seeking to protect the rainforest of Brazils’ Para state.

North Africa

British Special Forces on the ground in Libya?

A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron denied there are any British combat troops on the ground in Libya folloing press reports claiming SAS forces have been spotted in Misrata.

Palestine

Judaization of geography in Jerusalem

A new bill in the Knesset would change Jerusalem neighborhoods with Arabic names to Hebrew ones—while Mayor Nir Barakat said the municipality would continue to build Jewish-only housing regardless of “political issues.”

East Asia

China: Fuzhou blasts signal growing peasant ferment

Deadly blasts that targeted government buildings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, are being blamed on a peasant farmer who waged a legal struggle for years after his home was destroyed to make way for a new expressway.