The People’s Defense Front in Peru’s central Andean region of Ayacucho, announced a one-week deadline for the Southern Peru Copper Corporation to halt its exploration activities in the area before local campesinos launch an indefinite civil strike.
Some 180 hectares of rainforest in the Amazon have been defoliated using a potent mix of herbicides sprayed by airplane, according to IBAMA, Brazil’s environmental law enforcement agency.
Pedro Pimentel Rios, a veteran of Guatemala’s eilte military unit, the Kaibiles, was deported by ICE back to the Central American nation for his role in the 1982 massacre of at least 162 villagers at Las Dos Erres, in the northern jungle department of Petén.
The UN Human Rights Council released the Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, finding potential crimes against humanity committed by Israel. The report focuses on the seven-month period last year when the Gaza protest campaign known as the "Great March of Return and the Breaking of the Siege" was taking place. During this period, 6,106 unarmed protesters were shot by military snipers, resulting in 189 Palestinian deaths. (Photo: Ma'an News Agency)
International solidarity actions will be held Saturday with a protest at Bilbao’s city hall to stop the imminent eviction and demolition of the Kukutza III Gaztetxea community center to make way for a housing development.
The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization released a statement confirming the occupied status of East Jerusalem, which is on UNESCO’s “World Heritage in Danger” list, of threatened sites of global significance.
A suicide bomber struck Kandahar’s historic Red Mosque during a mourning ceremony for Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s slain half-brother, regional strongman Ahmed Wali Karzai, killing the province’s leading cleric.
A new report by the International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Centre finds that piracy on the world’s high seas has surged this year, and calls for concerted action by international naval forces.
Pakistan publicly called a halt to US drone flights from Shamsi airbase near Quetta—yet drone strikes in Pakistan’s border regions have continued, presumably from other bases in Pakistan, or from the CIA base in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
The NATO powers hope a compliant post-Qaddafi regime in Libya will counter-balance the OPEC price hawks. This doubtless means little at the moment to Libya’s Berbers, who have won cultural freedom in their rebel zone, and face a massacre if Qaddafi prevails.
Egypt’s ruling military council announced a purge of police officers accused of killing protesters in the uprising that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February, as Cairo’s Tahrir Square is again occupied by thousands of protesters.
Rights groups protested a draft law in Iraq to ban demonstrations seen to violate the “public interest.” The law comes as opposition groups have launched a campaign of Friday protests in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square to demand the ouster of Prime Minister Maliki.
