US prosecutors argued that even if suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri is acquitted by a military tribunal, the US government has the authority to detain him at Guantánamo until the end of the hostilities in the US war on terror.
The Israeli government said it will move ahead with “sensitive housing projects” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as a rebuttal to UNESCO’s decision to grant Palestine full-member status. The US meanwhile cut funds to UNESCO.
Thousands of protesters blocked the Port of Oakland Nov. 2, bringing work there to a halt, as the city’s teachers and nurses and many businesses honored a general strike call. Protesters also blocked downtown streets, and seized an abandoned building near City Hall. Police only intervened in the wee hours of the next morning, evicting the occupied building, using tear-gas and rubber bullets and arresting some 80.
Photo: Climate Connections
Lawyers defending detainees at Guantánamo Bay said that Joint Task Force Gitmo staff intercept attorney-client privileged communications, violating the law and making it impossible for them to do their jobs.
Algeria is sending military forces to the border with Western Sahara after a group of Spanish and Italian aid workers were kidnapped from the Polisario-run refugee camps at Tindouf by supposed al-Qaeda militants.
Indigenous and peasant communities in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao are protesting the armed forces' proposal to allow mining companies to establish their own militia force to secure their operations.
Tanzania’s last remaining hunter-gatherer tribe won an unprecedented victory over development interests who claimed they were extinct, acquiring a certificate of “customary rights of occupancy” to their communal lands in the Great Rift Valley.
Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said it had begun injecting water and boric acid into Reactor No. 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, after detecting signs of fission which had supposedly achieved a “cold shutdown.”
Abdurraheem el-Keib—a dual US-Libyan citizen and veteran of the energy industry, described favorably as a “technocrat” by the Washington Post—was elected prime minister of Libya by leaders of the National Transitional Council.
Colombia’s DAS secret police agency was officially closed after years of scandals concerning paramilitary ties, assassinations, illegal wiretapping and corruption. DAS employees leaked hundreds of classified documents as the agency shut.
Haitian police arrested opposition legislative deputy Arnel Bélizaire at the Port-au-Prienc airport as he returned from an official visit to France and then whisked him to the National Penitentiary, sparking protests against President Michel Martelly.
A dispute between the government of right-wing president Ricardo Martinelli and the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group flared up again as the National Assembly began to debate changes to the Mining Code.
