Ecuador announced it will renegotiate contracts with foreign oil companies, seeking up to 90% of revenues for the state. Under a new law, the state is 100% owner of crude oil resources.
The decapitated bodies of four men were hung from a bridge in the south-central Mexican city of Cuernavaca. The Beltran Leyva Cartel claimed responsibility in a message left with the bodies.
Zapotec campesino leader Pablo López Alavés of the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca “Ricardo Flores Magón” (CIPO-RFM) is facing assault charges following an apparently illegal arrest.
Venezuela and the US are both seeking the extradition of notorious drug lord Walid Makled AKA “The Turk,” who was arrested in a joint operation by Colombian police and the DEA in Cúcuta.
President Evo Morales has declared a state of emergency in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz department, one of four in the nation battling wildfires that are consuming the eastern rainforests.
Six city police officers were arrested in connection with the killing of a mayor in a suburb of Monterrey, in northern Mexico. Santiago Mayor Edelmiro Cavazos had reportedly received threats form narco gangs.
The UN has issued an urgent call for the lifting of Israeli military restrictions on civilian access to Gaza Strip lands, finding they have dramatically affected the livelihoods of farmers and fishermen.
The US Army’s 4th Stryker Brigade crossed into Kuwait—supposedly the last “combat brigade” to leave Iraq. But private contractors will be boosting their presence in Iraq by nearly double.
John Joseph Jay of American Freedom Defense Initiative names as one of his “heroes and inspirations” Meir Kahane—founder of two State Department-listed Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
Colombian congressman Iván Cepeda presented a slander case against ex-President Alvaro Uribe to the World Court for his accusations that the San José de Apartadó peace community is tied to the FARC.
A Polisario Front official broached autonomy rather than independence for Morocco-occupied Western Sahara—even as new repression mounts against a general strike in the territory.
A couple were stoned to death for adultery in a Taliban-controlled village in northern Afghanistan, just as the Taliban is demanding a joint investigation with NATO and the UN into civilian casualties.
