Conservative millionaire magnate Ricardo Martinelli easily won Panama’s presidential election after the left broke with the ruling populist Democratic Revolutionary Party and called for abstentionism.
The Czech Republic’s largest nationwide Roma demonstrations since 1989 have been sparked by an arson attack on a Roma family in the Moravian village of Vitkov, which left three severely injured.
A bomb that exploded amid a violent protest in south Yemen left one dead, as Yemeni commandos stormed a hijacked a tanker in the Gulf of Aden, killing three Somali pirates and capturing 11 others.
To keep global temperatures from rising 2 degrees C., researchers say carbon emissions must be limited to 1 trillion metric tons—more than half already released since the Industrial Revolution.
Iran launched a cross-border air attack on Kurdish rebel positions in Iraq—the first time Tehran has used aircraft against Kurdish guerillas.
Police in Berlin arrested nearly 300 at the city’s May Day march, with riot police battling hundreds of protesters deep into the night. May Day violence also rocked Hamburg, Istanbul, Athens and Zurich.
Despite the cancellation of the official May Day parade as a measure to combat the spread of “Swine Flu,” some 200 workers marched in Ciudad Juárez to protest Mexico’s neoliberal reforms.
A May Day rally in Tehran, organized by independent Iranian labor organizations, was attacked by security and intelligence forces, with many beaten and arrested. Arrests are also reported in Sanandaj.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez defied the request of his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe to help catch FARC guerrillas that apparently fled to Venezuelan territory after a deadly battle.
Seventeen people were arrested on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao for involvement in a drug-trafficking ring with connections to Hezbollah, the police there said.
A judge for the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon ordered the release of four generals held on suspicion of their involvement in the suicide bombing that killed former prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
Attorney General Eric Holder hailed the guilty plea of former “enemy combatant” Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri as evidence that “our criminal justice system can and will hold…terrorists accountable.”
