As Libyan rebels advanced on Ajdabiya and Qaddafi forces advanced on Misrata, the last rebel-held city in the west, the transitional council in Benghazi appointed a prime minister and Allied air-strikes continued.
In violence-torn Ciudad Juárez, the mayor has appointed a new security czar—Lt. Col. Julian Leyzaola Perez, a veteran of counterinsurgency operations in Mexico’s south, who is viewed ominously by human rights groups.
Hours after the government concluded the restitution of some 63,000 acres of usurped lands to Afro-Colombian communities in Chocó department, illegal armed groups raided and burned several acres of crops.
The UK-based indigenous rights group Survival International noted the 100th anniversary of an historic report by Irish investigator Roger Casement finding that 30,000 Amazon Indians were enslaved by British rubber interests.
The UK confirmed the arrest of a Peruvian national on suspicion of crimes against humanity as a member of the Shining Path. He is being held under the Coroners and Justice Act, which allows prosecution for war crimes by nonresidents.
With global eyes on the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the White House signed an accord with Chile to help the South American country develop a nuclear energy program. The accord was protested by indigenous activists.
Despite the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Obama’s 2012 budget calls for an additional $36 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear power plants. Obama last week called nuclear power an “important part” of his energy agenda.
Even as the world is gripped by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Russia announced it will build a reactor in neighboring Belarus—where large areas still remain closed off due to the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.
Despite a temporary construction moratorium in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, China is still planning to move ahead with an ambitious thrust of nuclear development—with a new generation of supposedly “safe” reactors.
Power was restored to the control room of the No. 3 reactor at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant—but smoke has been rising intermittently from the reactor building, and elevated radiation is now detected in Tokyo’s water supply.
Yemen’s Parliament enacted several emergency measures at the request of President Ali Abdullah Saleh in an effort to end anti-government protests—but opposition lawmakers rejected the vote as illegal and fraudulent.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in Cairo that the UN Security Council resolution authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya is “not time-limited,” while rebel leaders in Paris pledged a “democratic, secular” post-Qaddafi regime.
