The Andes

Peru: Puno protests resumed, government prepares dialogue

After a suspension to allow for presidential elections to take place in the Puno region, local Aymara activists announced that they will resume their strike civil strike indefinitely, and immediately erected roadblocks on the main highway to Bolivia.

Palestine

Israeli settlers, soliders raid West Bank villages

Dozens of armed Israeli settlers attacked residents of Qusra village in the northern West Bank, as Israeli troops broke up a an anti-settlement rally in Iraq Burin and conducted raids across the West Bank.

Mexico

Mexico: narco-tank factory busted in Tamaulipas

Soldiers patroling the Mexican border town of Ciudad Camargo discovered a warehouse where two armor-plated “tanks” were being constructed. Authorities have intercepted 100 such “narco-tanks,” which the press has dubbed “The Monsters.”

Iran

Iran: contract workers demand rights

A deadly explosion at the Abadan refinery has crystalized the precarious situation facing Iranian oil workers, who are mobilizing to demand an end to neoliberal measuresthat deny them the right to unionize.

North Africa

Libya: mercenaries fighting on both sides?

Following recent charges that Israeli spook firms are recruiting mercenaries for Qaddafi come claims that the CIA is recruiting mercenaries for the Libyan rebels. Yet the rebel government had apparently arrested a team of these “mercenaries”…

The Andes

Afro-Colombian community leader assassinated in Medellín

Ana Fabricia Córdoba, a leader of displaced Afro-Colombians seeking return of their usurped lands, was slain by an unidentified gunman on a city bus in Medellín. Her daughters received a phone threat that they would “end up the same way.”

Palestine

West Bank mosque torched in “price tag” attack

The mosque in the village of Maghayer near Ramallah suffered damage and threatening graffiti in a pre-dawn vandal and arson attack—with scrawled slogans calling it a “price tag” by Israeli settlers.