Just two days after a mass anti-G8 demonstration in Rostock turned violent, protestors skirmished with police June 4, this time in a part of town known for neo-Nazi attacks in the early 1990s. Nearly 1,000 staged a sit-down protest in… Read moreGermany: riots rock Rostock
As the Lebanese army continues to pound Fatah al-Islam positions at the Nahr el Bared refugee camp, fighting also broke out June 3 with a second Islamist faction, Jund al-Sham, at Ein al-Helweh, Lebanon’s largest refugee camp. Mediators from other… Read moreLebanon: new front opens at Ein al-Helweh refugee camp
Thousands of protesters at a mosque in Pattani, Thailand, agreed to stand down June 4 after Fourth Army Region Lt. Gen. Wirote Buajaroon signed an order to establish an independent panel to investigate widespread reports of assaults and harassment of… Read moreProtest and rail sabotage in southern Thailand
A telling story in the June 2 New York Times, “Advocacy Group’s Publicity Campaign on Darfur Angers Relief Organizations,” reveals a rift between the Save Darfur Coalition and the aid agencies actually on the ground in Darfur. Save Darfur takes… Read moreSplit between activists and aid groups in Darfur campaign seen
Assyrian Christian leaders in Iraq say the future existence of the country’s dwindling Christian population hangs in the balance as violence continues unabated. According to a report by the Assyrian International News Agency, direct blame has been leveled at Iraqi… Read moreIraq: Assyrian Christians fear genocide
Now, let’s see. A May 26 AP account by Larry McShane on the case of Syed Hashmi, a 27-year-old Pakistan-born US citizen and former Queens resident extradited from England back to New York to face terrorism charges, says he is… Read moreNew Yorker on trial for possession of terrorist rain gear
Security forces in Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago worked closely with US authorities to hunt down the men behind a supposed plot to blow up JFK International Airport in New York City. The arrest of three suspects was announced June… Read moreLatest NYC terror scare linked to attempted coup in Trinidad
The Enawene Nawe, a remote Amazonian tribe in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, are blockading a highway in protest at a series of hydroelectric dams that will destroy their vital fishing grounds. Companies led by the world·s largest soya… Read moreAmazon tribe block roads to halt hydro project
The Guatemalan Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by activists to block the candidacy of former dictator José Efraín Ríos Montt in congressional elections this Sept. 9. However, Supreme Court Spokesman Guillermo Melgar said that that the ruling can be… Read moreGuatemala: court accepts, activists reject ex-dictator’s candidacy
A roadside bomb killed 10 government-hired paramilitary troops in southern Thailand’s Bannang Sata district, Yala province, as they returned from negotiations with Muslim protesters May 31. Almost immediately after the bombing, gunmen opened fire on a group of Muslim villagers… Read moreThailand: paramilitary troops, mosque attacked
Five people, including a local militia jawan (infantryman), were killed May 31 in India’s eastern state of Manipur in fighting with the Kuki Revolutionary Army. The so-called “ultra” ethnic guerilla group apparently attacked a patrol of the 7th Manipur Rifles… Read moreIndia: ethnic violence in east, west
David Phinney writes for Iraq Slogger, May 31: Rumors of labor trafficking and abuse have plagued building contractor now completing the $592 million Baghdad embassy building project, but a State Department Inspector General investigation reported finding nothing untoward. Now an… Read moreForced labor building US Baghdad embassy?
