US Homeland Security is extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians for another 18 months, but it continues to deport “criminal” Haitians, exposing them to life-threatening dangers.
Armed with machetes and knives, Haitian national police and local officials destroyed some 200 tents in a Port-au-Prince camp set up by people left homeless in last year’s earthquake.
Some 500 people marched in Guadalajara to demand that the federal and state governments honor their commitments to protect land that is sacred to the Wixárika (Huichol) indigenous group.
Thousands of Hondurans gathered at Tegucigalpa’s Toncontín International Airport to greet former president Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya (2006-2009) as he returned from a 16-month exile.
Two Chilean Mapuche prisoners were admitted to a hospital after 72 days of a liquids-only hunger strike. Corrections authorities denied that the prisoners’ lives were in danger.
Bill Weinberg‘s purge from WBAI-New York for his political dissent is protested in a NY Daily News editorial, “Noncommercial, counterculture icon WBAI radio spirals into self-destructive 9/11-conspiracy madness.”
Deadly blasts that targeted government buildings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi province, are being blamed on a peasant farmer who waged a legal struggle for years after his home was destroyed to make way for a new expressway.
West Bank settlers reportedly set fire to Palestinian agricultural lands near Nablus after being evicted by Israeli troops from nearby Joseph’s Tomb, which they again attempted to occupy.
Iran cheers protesters in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain while apparently backing the repression in Syria—just as the US cheers protesters in Syria while backing the repression in Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain.
NATO air-strikes in Helmand and Nuristan provinces left scores of civilians dead, local officials said. The outrage comes amid reports that the US has opened secret talks with the Taliban.
Prime Minister Maliki broached keeping troops in Iraq after the Dec. 31 deadline—three days after thousands of followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr held a militaristic rally in Baghdad to demand complete withdrawal.
Thousands of Aymara protesters took over the city of Puno, demanding an end to a Canadian silver mining project. Peasants from the Bolivian side of the lake have joined the barricades, and the city remains shut down.
