ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips have opted to abandon their heavy crude oil projects in eastern Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt rather than cede majority ownership and operating control to the state-owned oil company PDVSA, Venezuelan officials announced June 26. President Hugo Chavez had… Read moreExxon quits Venezuela
Eritrean state radio reports that fifty-three weyane (Ethiopian) soldiers, including officers, have defected to Eritrea over the last few months. The soldiers are said to include three lieutenants, a second lieutenant, a sergeant, four corporals and 14 lance-corporals, who all… Read moreSomali, Ethiopian defections to Eritrea?
The UN has now vindicated the recent findings of a British study on the roots of the Darfur conflict. From Guardian Newspapers, June 25: LONDON — The conflict in Darfur has been driven by climate change and environmental degradation, which… Read moreDarfur crisis linked to climate change: UN
Somali police fired on a crowd of people trying to storm a food warehouse in Mogadishu June 25, killing five civilians, witnesses reported. Hundreds of people had gathered at a police station that was serving as a food distribution center,… Read moreSomalia: police fire on food riot
Two people were killed, including a three-year-old girl, and seven wounded June 24 when presumed leftist guerillas detonated a bomb in a tourist area of Colombia’s main Pacific port, Buenaventura (Valle del Cauca department), the latest in a series of… Read moreColombia: bombing wave at Pacific port halts hostage talks
Aborigine community leaders in a remote Northern Territory town set to receive the first police and army troops under an Australian federal government’s plan to combat a reported wave of domestic and sexual abuse are questioning the need for “military… Read moreAustralia: military occupies aboriginal communities
Management of an auto parts plant operated by New York-based Alcoa, Inc. in El Progreso, Honduras, fired more than 50 union leaders and activists from June 8 to June 15, according to the National Labor Committee (NLC), a US labor… Read moreHonduras: Alcoa plant fires unionists
Late on June 21 the US House of Representatives voted 214-203 against an amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill that would have closed the US Defense Department’s Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), a combat-training school for Latin… Read moreSOA survives House vote; Cuba regime change funds approved
Early on May 31, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Benito A. Gonzalez after trying to handcuff him in an unincorporated area north of Escondido, California, just east of Interstate 15. Gonzalez was an out-of-status immigrant who lived in… Read moreUndercover border agent kills migrant
On June 15, a federal judge in Trenton, New Jersey, ruled that officials at the Monmouth County jail in Freehold can use intravenous or feeding tubes to force feed immigration detainee Samuel Izrailovich Shevaniya, who is on hunger strike. Shevaniya… Read moreHunger-striking immigration detainee force-fed in NJ
Mexico took the first steps June 21 toward extraditing former Quintana Roo governor Mario Villanueva Madrid to the US, where he is wanted in New York City on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. President Felipe Calderón has… Read moreMexico moves to extradite former governor
Spain’s regional Basque Parliament June 22 voted down a motion submitted by the right-wing People’s Party (PP) advocating “freedom of expression” and “pluralism in news media in Venezuela,” following the refusal of the Hugo Chávez government to renew the broadcast… Read moreBasque regional government stands up for Hugo Chavez
