The Andes
Peru: police surround Conga occupation
Hundreds of National Police troops have surrounded a protest encampment estabished by campesinos at the site of the Conga mining project in northern Peru.
Africa
Kenya: land at issue in electoral tensions
Separatists on Kenya's coast are boycotting the elections, claiming their territory was illegally annexed, its lands usurped from the inhabitants and handed out to settlers.
Southeast Asia
China: drug lord’s execution sparks dissent
Chinese TV broadcast images of a Burmese drug lord and his accomplices on their way to a death chamber in Yunnan, prompting online protests from rights activists in Beijing.
South Asia
Bangladesh sentences Islamist leader to death
Violent street protests broke out after the International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh sentenced to death Jamaat-e-Islami party leader Delwar Hossain Sayeedee.
Southeast Asia
Malaysia: 10 dead in stand-off with Sulu partisans
The Sultanate of Sulu claims that 10 members of the royal army were killed in an attack by Malaysian authorities on a village siezed by the Sulu partisans in Sabah state on Borneo.
Africa
Puntland sentences Shabab militants to death
Twelve Shabab militants charged with the murder of a prominent Islamic scholar were sentenced to death by a court in Somalia’s autonomous enclave of Puntland.
Greater Middle East
Islamists, labor protest in Jordan
Hundreds of Islamists demonstrated in Jordan to demand faster political reform after an election weeks earlier that produced a mostly pro-government parliament.
The Andes
We are not drug traffickers: FARC
FARC commander Rodrigo Granda, speaking to reporters in Havana where the peace talks are underway, denied that the guerilla army is a drug-trafficking organization.
The Andes
Colombia: impunity in Palace of Justice massacre?
The Colombian government has denied the disappearances of 11 people during the 1985 Palace of Justice siege, and called for the release of a retired colonel convicted in the case.
Watching the Shadows
Catholic sex scandal Jewish plot: papal hopeful
Alan Dershowitz calls out papal hopeful Cardinal Maradiaga of Honduras as floating conspiracy theories about how the Vatican sex scandal was instrumented by the Jews.
North Africa
Al-Qaeda ‘moderates’ seek breakaway state in Mali
A supposed AQIM document found in Timbuktu criticizes jihadists for destroying Sufi shrines and alienating the local populace, calling for a more pragmatic Islamist state.
Iraq
Exxon begins explorations in Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government announced that ExxonMobil has begun exploring for oil in the region—in a deal rejected by the Baghdad central government as illegal.