Hundreds of Palestinian detainees at Ashkelon prison, in Israel’s south, continued their hunger strike into a second day following attacks by prison security forces, who fired tear-gas and beat detainees with batons and hoses.
A Tibetan writer was sentenced to four years in prison last month after helping edit a publication critical of Chinese policy in the restive region. The move comes amid a new wave of protests and arrests in Tbet.
The captain of The Audacity of Hope, a US boat carrying activists seeking to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been jailed in Athens. John Klusmer is being charged with two felonies, including “disturbing sea traffic”
Israeli Defense Forces arrested 23 Palestinians, including two members of the Palestine National Council, in operations across the West Bank. There are 6,700 Palestinians currently held in prisons and camps in Israel and in the West Bank.
At least 24 were killed in Friday protests across Syria, as thousands again took to the streets throughout Yemen, and some 5,000 led by the families of those killed in the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
Venezuela’s Telecommunications Commission has opened sanction proceedings against news channel Globovision, accused of spreading “anxiety in the population” by broadcasting images of the deadly violence at El Rodeo prison.
The Audacity of Hope, US-registered lead ship in the Gaza aid flotilla, was stopped by the Greek Coast Guard just some 20 minutes outside the port of Perama. Athens says all ships bound for Gaza will be prohibited from leaving Greek ports.
Indigenous protest leader Walter Aduviri in Puno, Peru, announced a halt to the civil strike that has paralyzed the region for more than 40 days—and called for reconstitution of the “Aymara nation,” now divided between Peru, Bolivia and Chile.
An Israeli human rights group is appealing a court decision upholding the policy that allows Christians —but not Muslims—to exit the besieged Gaza Strip for worship at Jerusalem’s holy sites.
White House plans to draw down the 30,000 “surge” troops in Afghanistan come with a Pentagon program to expand an anti-Taliban self-defense militia force by 30,000—including former insurgents who share the Taliban ideology.
Clashes between protesters and police again erupted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square after authorities attempted to bar surviving family members from an official ceremony honoring those killed in the uprising against Hosni Mubarak.
Paris announced that French forces have dropped arms to Berber rebels in Libya’s western mountains, while Barack Obama continues to assert that the bombing does not constitute “hostilities” that would allow Congressional action against it.
