The Pentagon is this week leading “Eager Lion 2012″—the largest multinational military exercises in the history of Jordan, with maneuvers planned along the Syrian border as well as in the Gulf of Aqaba, across from Israel.
The New York/Hong Kong-based Human Rights in China reports that You Minglei, an independent activist in Nanchang, was arrested on charges of “inciting subversion of state power” after distributing leaflets.
The DEA refuses to confirm claims by the Colombian National Police that top drug lord Javier Antonio Calle Serna AKA “Comba” turned himself in to US agents. Calle Serna’s “Rastrojos” gang is linked to both the FARC and paramilitaries.
While mainstream accounts emphasize the defendants’ refusal to respect the court, the ACLU points out that the Gitmo tribunal for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants falls short of international standards for justice.
In a new escalation of the factional narco-violence in northern Mexico, nine bodies—some bearing signs of torture—were hanged from an overpass in Nuevo Laredo, and 14 severed heads left in ice coolers outside city hall.
While Tuareg rebels continue to claim to hold Timbuktu, an attack on the revered tomb of a Muslim saint by Ansar Dine militants shows jihadist factions have a free hand. UNESCO has issued an urgent appeal to protect the city’s cultural sites.
Media are suddenly full of voices plugging hydro-fracking as the key to finally achieving US "energy independence"—in undoubted response to a drop in energy consumption, and to modest federal efforts to regulate the industry.
Sahelian governments and international aid groups are struggling to cope with both the continual arrivals of people fleeing the fighting in northern Mali, and the mounting number of hungry people across the region.
The demolition of a mosque near the Golden Temple of Dambulla—a Buddhist cave-temple in central Sri Lanka—bears echoes of the 1992 destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in India, which ultimately led to the Gujarat genocide.
As Human Rights Watch issued a report accusing the Syrian regime of war crimes, Ankara invoked the threat of NATO intervention if fighting again spills over the border into Turkish territory.
Members of Pakistan’s Shi’ite Hazara ethnic minority held protests in London and Hamburg, charging “genocide” against their people with the complicity of the Islamabad regime—and the silence of the international community.
As the Taliban announce the start of their spring offensive, Obama signs a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Hamid Karzai allowing a major US military presence in Afghanistan beyond the supposed withdrawal deadline of the end of 2014.
