Revelations that Secret Service agents protecting Obama at the Cartagena summit hired local sex workers puts Colombia briefly in the news—while the four car bombs that went off during the summit barely rate a mention.
With the Keystone pipeline to the US stalled, Canada’s government is pushing a new Pacific route from the Alberta tar sands fields for export to China. But First Nations in the proposed pipelines’ path oppose both routes.
The Taliban launched coordinated attacks in the Afghan capital and three other provinces—days after hundreds marched in Faryab province to protest a NATO-led night raid that resulted in the death of a madrassa teacher.
Six days after they were abducted by Shining Path guerillas, hostage Camisea Consortium workers were freed in the rainforest of Peru’s Cuzco region—but accounts are sketchy and contradictory on exactly how the captives were released.
Much of Peru’s northern Andean region of Cajamarca was shut down in a 24-hour civil strike or paro, the latest action in the protest campaign against the US-owned Conga gold-mining project.
A group of 40 women of the Innu indigenous nation in northern Quebec have launched a cross-country march on Montreal to protest the provincial government’s Plan Nord, a mega-project that would open the north to mining and energy companies.
As Mali’s new interim president Dioncounda Traore pledged a “total, relentless war” against Tuareg rebels that have seized the country’s north, Nicolas Sarkozy warned of a “a terrorist or Islamic state in the heart of the Sahel.”
The latest coup d’etat in Guinea-Bissau is being linked by Western diplomats to the international drug trade. Presidential candidate Carlos Gomes may have ran afoul of the military by pledging to crack down on cocaine transshipments.
A National Police helicopter searching for 40 hostages held by presumed Sendero Luminoso guerillas in a rainforest area of Peru’s Cuzco region was fired upon, killing a police captain on board, and wounding three others.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights is hearing a case involving a “dirty war” atrocity in which President Ollanta Humala was implicated—sparking a frenzy of conspiracy theories among Peru’s political class.
Over the past 10 years, more than 40% of Colombia’s national territory has come under the control of multinational corporations for oil, mineral and biofuel production—part of what critics decry as a global land-grab.
In a surprise move, Bolivian President Evo Morales rescinded the contract of a Brazilian firm to build a controversial highway through the Amazon rainforest. But opponents of the project suspect a move to undermine their struggle.
