Former Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan told the current government to abandon nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, comparing the nuclear industry’s hold on society to that of the Imperial military during World War II.
Tokyo’s notoriously nationalist governor Shintaro Ishihara is pushing a plan for the metropolitan government to purchase and annex the China-claimed Senkaku Islands in the hydrocarbon-rich East China Sea—without consulting local Okinawa officials.
The official US hand-wringing is all for public consumption. On June 4, 1989, China’s rulers proved to the world that they were willing to slaughter their own citizens in the interests of “stability.” They were rewarded with massive investment.
The Guatemalan government has begun a process virtually closing down the agency in charge of preserving and investigating military and police records from the country’s bloody 1960-1996 civil war.
The body of indigenous teacher and activist Teódulo Santos Girón was found in Mexico’s Michoacán state, the night after he was abducted. He was the 29th murder victim from the rural community of Ostula, site of an ongoing land dispute.
Harassed by student protests, Enrique Peña Nieto of the former entrenched PRI political machine is still favored to win Mexico’s July 1 presidential elections, but polls released at the end of May showed his lead slipping.
The deal between Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) and the jihadi faction Ansar Dine for creation of an “Islamic state” in Mali’s northern breakaway region has reportedly collapsed.
Amid a wave of anti-immigrant protests and harsh new laws, Israel’s Interior Minister Eli Yishaii complains that most of the “Muslims that arrive here do not even believe that this country belongs to us, to the white man.”
An Egyptian court found former president Hosni Mubarak guilty of complicity in the killing of protesters during last year's uprising and sentenced him to life in prison. But his sons and top security officials were cleared of wrongdoing.
Survival International is calling upon Mick Jagger—recently named by Peru as an “environmental ambassador”—to demand answers on Lima’s “secret plans” to expand the Camisea natural gas bloc into a reserve for “uncontacted” indigenous tribes.
National Police fired on protesters amid a new “indefinite” civil strike called to oppose the US-backed Conga gold-mining project in Peru’s northern region of Cajamarca. Supporters of the project are calling for a state of emergency to be declared.
The conflict over the Xstrata mine in Espinar province of Peru’s Cuzco region escalated as National Police troops in full riot gear stormed the office of the mayor, Oscar Mollohuanca, arresting him on charges of leading protests that have left four dead.
