King Emere Godwin Bebe Okpabi and other tribal leaders in Nigeria’s Ogoniland filed suit in US court against Royal Dutch Shell, charging the oil giant polluted local groundwater with benzene at levels 900 times World Health Organization limits.
After the cross-country Eighth Indigenous March arrived in La Paz to a tumultuous welcome, President Evo Morales announced that he would alter plans for the road linking Bolivia with Brazil so that it will not pass through the TIPNIS indigenous reserve.
A ranger in Peru’s remote Manu national park was lightly wounded in a confrontation with an “uncontacted” indigenous band, which fired arrows on a patrol boat. Authorities expressed concern for the health of the isolated bands if they are contacted.
Environmentalists and Mapuche indigenous leaders rallied in Chile’s remote southern town of Curarrehue to oppose the planned Panqui hydro-electric project, which would inundate several small Mapuche communities.
Judicial authorities in Guatemala declared ex-president Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores a fugitive and ordered his arrest to face charges of genocide for massacres carried out during the country’s civil war in the 1980s.
Obama announced that all US forces will be withdrawn from Iraq by the new year—but in fact thousands of private contractors and hundreds of military advisors will remain in a program coordinated by the Pentagon’s Office of Security Cooperation.
The Federation of Workers Councils Unions of Iraq (FWCUI) local at the Taq Taq Oil Operation Company in Kurdistan have submitted a complaint against the company over working conditions and a lack of equality for Kurdish employees.
As nearly 10,000 Turkish troops chase down Kurdish rebels on the southeastern border and into Iraq, Turkey’s foreign minister met with his Iranian counterparti in Ankara to pledge cooperation against the guerilla forces of the PKK.
The Basque armed group ETA issued a statement saying it is ending its 43-year armed campaign for independence and called on Spain and France “to open a process of a direct dialogue” to arrive at a resolution of the conflict.
The Greek parliament approved a new austerity package after a day of street fighting in Athens that saw the death of one protester. The 53-year-old construction worker may have died in clashes between communists and anarchists.
Amnesty International is calling for the NTC to give a full accounting of the slaying of Moammar Qaddafi. Reports conflict on whether he was already injured by a NATO air-strike when he was captured, or was shot while in the hands of NTC fighters.
Demonstrators gathered in Paris to mark the 50th anniversary of a police massacre of Algerian anti-war protesters that has become one of the most shameful episodes of modern French history—still officially denied by the state.
