The California Department of Corrections reports that at least 6,600 prisoners in at least 11 of the state’s 33 prisons have joined the hunger strike initiated by some 400 inmates at the Pelican Bay facility on July 1.
An attack on a Sinai gas pipeline pumping Egyptian natural gas to Israel and Jordan interrupted supply for the fourth time this year. No group has claimed responsibility for of the attacks, but authorities suspect Sinai-based Bedouins.
Ahmed Wali Karzai—half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the de facto ruling warlord of Kandahar—was assassinated by a close associate at one of his five mansions by a senior commander of his own security detail.
The Knesset has just passed a law banning calls for a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. The Israel-based website BoycottIsrael! remains online at the moment, and it will be interesting to see if any action is taken against it.
As thousands commemorated the 16th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre in eastern Bosnia, Ratko Mladic faces genocide charges in The Hague—yet is still hailed as a hero by Serbia’s ultra-nationalists.
Four years after an order from the Israeli Supreme Court, the IDF demolished a two-mile section of the West Bank wall near Bil’in village. The demolition came after the attorney for the villagers threatened a contempt of court motion.
The US and French ambassadors visited the army-besieged city of Hama during Friday protests to express their “solidarity” with the demonstrators—allowing the Assad regime to portray the protesters as pawns of Western imperialism.
As South Sudan formally declares independence, thousands of Ethiopian “peacekeepers” are headed for the contested border enclave of Abyei, and the indigenous Nuba people take up arms in the North’s Kordofan region.
As a desperate Qaddafi threatens suicide attacks on European capitals, signs of a split emerge in the rebel National Transitional Council—raising fears of a widening of the civil war even after the dictator falls.
The Kichwa people of Sarayaku, a remote community in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, have brought suit against the Quito government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights over oil contracts on their traditional lands.
FARC guerillas attacked the central plaza of the indigenous Nasa village Toribio in Colombia’s Cuaca department, leaving two civilian residents dead and 73 injured. Indigenous authorities condemned the assault as a threat to their autonomy and survival.
Famed Argentine folksinger Facundo Cabral, an icon of Latin American protest music, was shot to death by unknown gunmen who ambushed his car on the way to the airport in Guatemala City.
