Haitian students announced they are planning to file complaints with international agencies about a campus invasion involving soldiers from the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti.
Honduras’ National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) said it had collected 1,019,765 signatures on petitions calling for a constituent assembly to rewrite the country’s 1982 Constitution.
Honduran president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa announced on that he had signed an agreement with the education workers’ unions ending a 26-day strike by some 55,000 teachers.
Guanajuato governor Juan Manuel Oliva Ramírez announced that the state government would soon release seven women who had been jailed on charges of “homicide in the case of close relatives.”
Suicide bombers struck an Ahmadiyya mosque during Friday prayers in the western Pakistan town of Mardan—and a march by Shi’ites in solidarity with the Palestinians in Quetta.
Some 12,000 marched in Paris to protest French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s mass expulsion of Roma migrants. Some 1,000 have been summarily deported since the policy was announced last month.
The US State Department has for the first time called for withholding Merida Initiative funds based on human rights abuses in Mexco—but at the same time approved release of $36 million.
Taiwan's Council of Indigenous Peoples signed an agreement with the Pacific Island state of the Marshall Islands aimed at increasing bilateral exchanges to promote Austronesian culture. The agreement seeks to promote cooperation between Taiwan's indigenous communities and the linguistically related people of the Marshall Islands, particularly in the fields of language and preservation of traditional wisdom. The agreement, signed last month, coincides with the opening of the UN International Year of Indigenous Languages, which acknowledges to the critical state of many indigenous tongues, and seeks to promote their protection and use, both at national and international levels. (Photo of Bunum people via Mata Taiwan)
Violence continues to escalate in the conflicted northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas. At least 25 were killed as soldiers stormed a training camp allegedly set up by Los Zetas in Ciudad Mier.
Georgetown University announced that former Colombian president and accused war criminal Álvaro Uribe will be named a “distinguished scholar in the practice of global leadership.”
Although before the Deepwater Horizon disaster they won little media attention, government statistics show that more than 100 fires and explosions take place in the Gulf of Mexico each year.
Before Hamas resumed armed attacks this week, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced plans to “hermetically seal” the Gaza Strip—to little media attention.
