Standard & Poor’s raised its outlook on Bolivia, citing new investment in the mining sector—as unprecedented forest fires ravage the country’s Amazon basin, and violence is feared as peasant colonists bar the progress of an indigenous march on La Paz.
Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HUJI) claimed responsibility for the terror blast at the court building in Delhi. HUJI leader Ilyas Kashmiri, allegedly killed in a drone strike earlier this year, was protected by Pakistani intelligence, according to court testimony.
NTC forces claim to be closing in on Moammar Qaddafi at a location in the Libyan desert—but Pepe Escobar on Asia Times warns that “the real war starts now,” predicting a new insurgency as the NTC fractures.
Pakistan announced the arrest of top al-Qaeda leader Younis al-Mauritani along with two other operatives. The arrests, in the city of Quetta, were hailed as the fruit of cooperation between Pakistan’s ISI and the CIA—despite recent friction over drone strikes.
Tuareg fighters are said to be accompanying a convoy of Qaddafi-loyalist forces that has crossed from Libya into Niger, raising speculation that the Tuareg leaders may have brokered a deal for Qaddafi’s exile in Burkina Faso.
A former member of the Macheteros Puerto Rican rebel group charges that US agents planted an electronic device in his car. The Macheteros meanwhile disavowed a letter sent in their name with a supposed chemical substance to Puerto Rico’s capitol building.
Some of the 1,100 Uruguayan troops in the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) may face repatriation following release of a video that appears to show the sexual abuse of a Haitian youth at a military base.
Chilean prosecutors ordered the detention of Sgt. Miguel Millacura of the carabineros militarized police in the killing of a teenager who had been walking with his brother to observe late-night protests following the Aug. 24-25 general strike.
Mexican marines shot and killed Gustavo Acosta Luján at his home in Apodaca, Nuevo León, in what appeared to be a botched raid targeting a suspected criminal in a different house in the neighborhood.
Two high-ranking US officials have been removed from their posts in fallout from Operation Fast and Furious, a bungled ATF program that allowed some 2,000 weapons to go from the US to Mexico.
Cars and buses were taken off the streets of Bolivia as the country held its first “National Day of the Pedestrian.” All motor vehicles were banned for the day in cities across the country, as the streets were given over to youth festivals and sporting events.
Two Shipibo indigenous communites in the Peruvian Amazon have broken off negotiations with Maple Gas Corporation over the health and environmental impacts of six oil spills on their territory over the past three years.
