Venezuela’s highest court ordered union leader Rubén González released just two days after a judge sentenced him to seven and a half years for instigating a job action and blocking a highway.
Barack Obama expressed “nothing but admiration for President Calderón” and his “war on drugs” at a joint press conference in Washington, DC during the Mexican president’s visit.
Mexico has requested “detailed information” from the US on an operation which reportedly allowed some 2,000 firearms to enter Mexico illegally in an effort to trace the activities of gun smugglers.
Panama’s President Ricardo Martinelli said he will ask legislators to rescind a mining law opponents say would encourage open-pit mining by foreign companies and endanger the environment.
Agriculture experts in China warn that the frequency and severity of droughts have increased over the past decade, causing heavy crop losses and posing a potentially grave threat to grain security.
An ethnic Uighur website editor was sentenced to seven years in prison in China following a secret trial, weeks after four others received death sentences in connection with armed attacks.
Rebel militias have risen in South Sudan’s Jonglei and Upper Nile states—fueling fears of a Khartoum strategy to take back lands from the SPLA before the South’s formal secession in July.
Moammar Qaddafi defended his military’s right to put down the rebels by invoking Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip, and insisted he still has “very good relations with the United States.”
Suspected al-Qaeda gunmen killed four soldiers in Yemen—one day after President Ali Abdullah Saleh refused to yield to protesters demanding his immediate resignation.
Thousands of protesters converged on cities and towns across Iraq, streaming in on foot in defiance of vehicle bans for rallies over corruption, unemployment and poor public services.
Thousands of protesters faced down riot police at Manama’s al-Qudaibiya Palace, where Bahrain’s cabinet meets, chanting slogans against the small but strategic Persian Gulf state’s monarchy.
Heavy gunfire broke out in Tripoli, as a militia led by the dictator’s son Khamis Qaddafi is said to have carried out a massacre while re-taking the rebel-held city of Zawiyah.
