The Abu Alkiyan Bedouin clan pledge to resist their forcible relocation to make way for a new Jewish town outside Beersheba. Israel says the clan is illegally squatting state lands—although it was transferred there in 1956 by military order.
Security forces killed seven when hundreds of local artisanal miners who invaded the premises of Barrick Gold’s North Mara mine in Tanzania—the latest in a series of deadly confrontations in Africa’s mineral sector.
Local timber interests are suspected in the slaying of Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria Do Espirito Santo da Silva, two activists seeking to protect the rainforest of Brazils’ Para state.
Qatar, one of the few Arab states to have joined the NATO-led military coalition against Qaddafi’s regime, has deported back to Libya a woman who fled the country after being gang-raped by Qaddafi’s thugs.
A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron denied there are any British combat troops on the ground in Libya folloing press reports claiming SAS forces have been spotted in Misrata.
A new bill in the Knesset would change Jerusalem neighborhoods with Arabic names to Hebrew ones—while Mayor Nir Barakat said the municipality would continue to build Jewish-only housing regardless of “political issues.”
Bill Weinberg‘s purge from WBAI-New York for his political dissent is protested in a NY Daily News editorial, “Noncommercial, counterculture icon WBAI radio spirals into self-destructive 9/11-conspiracy madness.”
Deadly blasts that targeted government buildings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, are being blamed on a peasant farmer who waged a legal struggle for years after his home was destroyed to make way for a new expressway.
West Bank settlers reportedly set fire to Palestinian agricultural lands near Nablus after being evicted by Israeli troops from nearby Joseph’s Tomb, which they again attempted to occupy.
Iran cheers protesters in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain while apparently backing the repression in Syria—just as the US cheers protesters in Syria while backing the repression in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain.
NATO air-strikes in Helmand and Nuristan provinces left scores of civilians dead, local officials said. The outrage comes amid reports that the US has opened secret talks with the Taliban.
Prime Minister Maliki broached keeping troops in Iraq after the Dec. 31 deadline—three days after thousands of followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held a militaristic rally in Baghdad to demand complete withdrawal.
