Thousands of coal trucks and other vehicles are backed up for 75 miles on a highway in northern China. In a recent monster-jam on the Beijing-Tibet highway, motorists were immobilized for five days.
Thousands of Shi’ites marched in mourning in Lahore a day after three suicide bombers blew themselves up amid a procession outside a mosque—the latest in a series of jihadist attacks on Muslims.
A spike in food prices has triggered deadly riots in Mozambique this week, with unrest over price hikes also reported in Egypt, Pakistan and Serbia—leading to fears of a new global food crisis.
Slovakia commemorated the victims of this week’s massacre in Bratislava with an official day of mourning. The targeted family was of mixed ethnic Slovak and Roma composition.
Hamas claimed credit for killing four Israeli settlers near Hebron, as Israel’s right-wing Shas party—which opposes any settlement freeze—said that Hamas terror would sabotage the peace process.
The US Department of Justice announced that it has charged Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimulla Mehsud in connection with the deadly Dec. 30 attack on CIA outpost in Afghanistan.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer called on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to remove any mention of his state’s controversial immigration law from a human rights report issued by the State Department.
Human Rights Watch condemned US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for force-feeding detained migrants. Detained men at the agency's El Paso Processing Center have been participating in a hunger strike since early January. ICE officials said that 11 men are striking, but AP reports the number may be closer to 30. In mid-January a federal judge authorized ICE to force-feed six of the protesters. The detained men have been protesting "rampant verbal abuse and threats of deportation from guards" and long detentions while awaiting a hearing. Most of the hunger strikers are from India or Cuba. (Photo: Hetsumani/Pixabay)
The Ukraine Security Service (SBU) appears to be targeting the country's anarchist youth following an attack on a leader of the neo-fascist Right Sector. In December, the SBU carried out searches at the homes of seven anarchists in the cities of Kiev, Brovary, Dnipro and Lviv. SBU officers reportedly forced two anarchists to sign a "cooperation agreement," and one of the activists had her passport confiscated. Those targeted were members of the groups Black Banner and Ecological Initiative. The searches were carried out as part of an investigation into an attack on a Right Sector militant Dmytro "Verbych" Ivashchenko, a veteran of the war in Ukraine's eastern Donbass region. (Photo: protest outside SBU office in Kiev, via Zaborona)
A 24-year-old Crimean Tatar was sentenced by a court in Russian-annexed Crimea to 10-and-a-half years' imprisonment for supposed involvement in a volunteer force patrolling the border of Crimea and mainland Ukraine to help enforce a blockade. Video evidence introduced in the trial only showed the suspect from behind. Nonetheless, Fevzi Sahandzhy was convicted of being a member of the Asker Battalion—also known as the Noman Çelebicihan Battalion, in honor of the martyred president of the short-lived independent Crimean Republic of 1918. The Battalion began participating in the blockade of Crimea in 2015 to press demands for the release of political prisoners and restoration of freedom of speech and assembly on the peninsula. (Photo: Human Rights in Ukraine)
Anti-war groups have issued a statement denouncing the “Iraq Debacle,” and calling for withdrawal of all US troops and military contractors, and for reparations to help the Iraqis rebuild.
Iraq’s Oil Ministry said the agreement Germany’s RWE public utility signed with the Kurdistan Regional Government to supply gas for the Nabucco pipeline project is illegal.
