UN Special Rapporteur on human rights Martin Scheinin cited the case of Canadian citizen and former US detainee Maher Arar in a report critical of international counter-terrorism practices.
President Obama will not replace two US brigades now departing Iraq—leaving 128,000 US troops there. But nine bombings over the weekend demonstrate the survival of a Sunni insurgency.
Several were killed in clashes between Pakistani troops and Taliban militants in the Tribal Areas—the same day the government signed a peace pact with tribal leaders.
Twelve of the 92 videotapes destroyed by the CIA contained evidence of torture, according to redacted documents filed with a federal court under an FOIA suit brought by the ACLU.
The US March 9 vowed to keep up military surveillance in waters off China and protested what it called harassment one day earlier of a US surveillance ship operated by civilian contractors for the Navy’s Military Sealift Command. The Pentagon… Read moreSabres rattle in South China Sea incident
China claimed declaration of March 28 as “Serfs Emancipation Day” as a “tit-for-tat” against the “Dalai clique,” while in Dharamsala, the Dalai Lama called for “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet.
A 44-day general strike in Guadeloupe ended with an agreement—but union leaders are under investigation as unrest spreads to the French overseas departments of Martinique and La Réunion.
Ecuador’s government ordered closed the group Acción Ecológica, days after it had called for sanctions against the consortium that operates the country’s trans-Andean oil pipeline.
Indigenous communities in the Ecuadoran Amazon are demanding sanctions against the consortium that runs the country’s trans-Andean pipeline following a massive oil spill.
The French firm Perenco, slated for a massive contract in Peru’s Amazon region, is having its income from oil revenues frozen in neighboring Ecuador following a tax dispute.
President Hugo Chávez called Colombian Defense Minister Juan Santos a “threat to peace in South America” and pledged to hit back hard if Colombia made any military incursion into Venezuela.
The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq writes: “After seven years of occupation, women in Iraq still suffer from outrageous misogynist practices of the Islamist and nationalist ruling militias.”
