Retired army Gen. Mauro Enrique Tello Quiñones, a civilian and another soldier, found dead near the Caribbean resort of Cancún, were tortured before being shot, Mexican authorities report.
Hundreds of Burmese Muslim refugees put to sea by Thai authorities remain missing. Burma’s junta denies the Rohingya exist as an indigenous ethnicity, calling them Bangladeshi settlers.
Australia claimed a blow against a home-grown terrorist cell, with the sentencing of six Muslim men who reportedly were planning attacks in response to Australia’s military involvement in Iraq.
As fighting continues in Sri Lanka, Amnesty International has called upon the government and the Tamil Tigers to declare a truce and allow more than a quarter million trapped civilians to escape.
Islamist rebel factions in Somalia have formed a united front to fight the transition government, while Turkey announced it is sending a warship to help police the Somali coast against pirates.
The US Treasury Department branded the PJAK guerillas of Iranian Kurdistan as a terrorist organization and front for the PKK. Simultaneously, Turkish warplanes again bombed PKK targets in Iraq.
A Turkish prosecutor launched an investigation into claims that Israel’s offensive in Gaza amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity, based on a complaint filed by the rights group Mazlum-Der.
Former vice president Dick Cheney warned Politico.com that there’s a “high probability” the US will get nuked by terrorists during President Obama’s watch.
President Hugo Chávez condemned the attack on Caracas’ main synagogue—but warned it was being used to fan unrest ahead of a referendum next week on his bid for unlimited re-election.
Survival International reports that indigenous communities of the Sierra de Perijá in Venezuela are being threatened by Colombian rebels, who violate their land rights, demand resources and threaten leaders.
A group of 300 Awá hunter-gatherer nomads is fleeing from bulldozers in the Brazilian Amazon as their last forest is rapidly destroyed, Survival International reports.
At the World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil, President Rafael Correa was condemned by Ecuador’s national indigenous peoples’ organization CONAIE over his policy towards uncontacted Amazon tribes.
