Israeli soldiers used force to shut down weekly non-violent anti-wall protests in villages across the West Bank, with clashes and tear gas reported in Nil’in and al-Ma’sara.
Fuel for generators is running out as the power crisis in Gaza continues, despite Israel’s supposed easing of the siege. Gaza officials warn that power plants will have to shut down again this weekend.
The Israel Government Tourist Office (IGTO) lost an appeal of a ban by the the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority on a vacation advertisement that described the Western Wall as part of Israel.
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) accused Congress of “appeasing anti-immigrant xenophobes” in approving $600 million in emergency spending for border security.
A crowd of about 300 villagers blocked a main road in eastern Afghanistan and chanted “Death to the US!” The protest came after a raid by US forces in which they said three villagers were killed.
Obama said the US can safely meet a deadline for removing combat troops from Iraq by year’s end—despite the fact that the country has still failed to form a new government.
Colombia’s new President Juan Santos met with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in a move to restore relations. The meeting took place at Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, where Simón Bolívar died in 1830.
A judge in Medellín acquitted ten soldiers, including a colonel and major, of participation in the massacre of eight civilians at the “peace community” of San José de Apartadó in February 2005.
The Taliban should be prosecuted for war crimes, Amnesty International said, following the release of a UN report showing a rise in targeted killings of civilians by insurgents in Afghanistan.
Iranian political prisoners have an issued an appeal for support of the demands of 17 hunger strikers at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison, who have refused food for the past two weeks.
Personnel of the Israel Lands Administration, backed up by a large police contingent, demolished the homes of some 300 residents in the “unrecognized” Bedouin village of al-Arakib in the Negev.
The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced that they have temporarily halted their campaign against ISIS after they were bombarded for the second time in four days by Turkish forces. With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an promising to "wipe out" the Kurdish YPG militia, calling them "terrorists," his forces in northern Syria attacked YPG positions east of the Euphrates River. The YPG, or People's Protection Units, constitute the central pillar of the US-backed SDF, which Washington continues to support with some 2,000 embedded troops. At least 10 YPG fighters were reported killed in the Turkish shelling of territory in the Kurdish autonomous canton of Kobani. The SDF said in a statement: "Turkish attacks in the north and ISIS attacks in the south against our troops had forced us to stop our current operation temporarily against ISIS in its last pocket… We call upon the international community to condemn the Turkish provocations." The statement claimed that YPG fighters responded to the shelling with artillery and machine-gun fire, destroying a Turkish military vehicle and border post. (Image of SDF fighters via Rudaw)
