In a move assailed by civil rights groups, Israel’s High Court voted to reject a challenge filed against provisions of the Citizenship Law, which bar Palestinians married to Israeli Arabs from receiving citizenship or residency.
Ricardo Soberón, the anti-drug chief who last year briefly suspended coca eradication in Peru, resigned under pressure from the administration of President Ollanta Humala—to be replaced with an outspoken eradication advocate.
Yet a fourth nuclear scientist was mysteriously blown up in Iran, just as the Islamic Republic began a uranium enrichment program at an underground facility near Qom. Even Russia said the enrichment is beyond what is needed for civilian purposes.
Citing inadequate progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, and continuing inaction on climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced that it has moved its famous “Doomsday Clock” to five minutes to midnight.
The State Department expelled Livia Acosta Noguera, Venezuelan consul general in Miami, over an alleged plot involving Venezuela, Iran and Cuba to launch a cyber-attack against the FBI, CIA, NSA and other top US government agencies.
A Russian naval flotilla led by an aircraft carrier docked in the Syrian port of Tartus in what Damascus hailed as a show of solidarity by Moscow—as NATO member Turkey broached military intervention in the conflicted Arab nation.
The Chinese government’s new white paper outlining its plans for the next five years in space broaches placing a human being on the Moon—as tensions with US allies again mount in contested areas of the South China Sea.
A “Plurinational Encuentro” held last month in Cochabamba brought together lawmakers and leaders of popular movements—but was boycotted by Bolivia’s main labor federation and dissident campesino organizations.
Following a wave of forest fires in the southern Araucania and Bio-Bio regions that left seven fire-fighters dead this week, Chile’s government suggested that “terrorism” by indigenous Mapuche activists may have been responsible.
Despite the mobilization of some 500 National Police troops, the streets of towns in Colombia’s northern Urabá region have been cleared by threats from Los Urabeños paramilitary network, which has declared an “armed strike.”
The Oromo Support Group reports that authorities in the de facto state of Somaliland are forcibly repatriating asylum-seekers from the oppressed Oromo and Ogadeni ethnic groups to Ethiopia, where they face persecution.
The Pentagon’s new “strategic guidance” document foresees a shift to the Asia-Pacific theater as the primary focus of US global policing. Budget cuts would only bring the US back to 2007 levels—still ahead of the 10 nearest rivals.
