As NATO stepped up air raids on Tripoli, hundreds of African refugees who have fled Libya blocked roads near their camp in Tunisia to protest plans for their forcible repatriation, provoking a clash with local residents.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in Washington DC was interrupted by pro-Palestinian protesters affiliated with the Move Over AIPAC coalition.
Ousted Honduran president Mel Zelaya and incumbent Porfirio Lobo signed a pact that will allow Zelaya to return to the country and “normalize” relations with the OAS. The next day, another journalist was shot in Tegucigalpa.
Ecuador and Bolivia have joined Peru in a regional bloc to regain lands and waters lost to Chile in the 1879-83 War of the Pacific. A case against Chile is pending at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Following a regional summit in Bamako, the leaders of Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger agreed to form a 75,000-man security force to police the Sahel and Sahara regions against al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).
Bahrain’s national appeal court unanimously upheld death sentences for two men convicted of killing police officers during anti-government protests in March. The court reduced the death sentences of two others to life in prison.
The European Union called for new sanctions against Belarus after former presidential candidate Andrey Sannikau received a five-year prison term for organizing protests following last year’s contested elections.
The day after Obama’s speech, which sought to speak for protesters in the Arab world in the name of “free markets,” al-Qaeda issues a statement seeking to speak for them in the name a jihad against “crusader enemies.”
Tens of thousands of protesters have filled the main squares of Spain’s cities for the past week to protest government austerity measures—in defiance of a government ban imposed ahead of municipal and regional elections.
The myopic Israeli leadership seem not to get that Obama’s statement on the 1967 borders is part of his effort to domesticate the Arab Spring—which is in their own interests.
Thousands took to the streets across Syria for Friday protests, and security forces again responded with tear gas and live ammunition, leaving at least 32 dead. Protesters dubbed Friday “Azadi Day,” for the Kurdish word for freedom.
Extreme weather events, such as the flooding now devastating much of the South, are likely to increase in the future due to biospheric imbalance that once scientist terms “global weirding.”
