In the largest protest to date by Haitians left homeless by the massive January earthquake, hundreds of people marched in Port-au-Prince to demand immediate measures to provide decent housing.
Honduran police arrested some 150 people while using tear gas and water cannons to disperse a demonstration by teachers, students and others in Tegucigalpa on the 23rd day of a teachers’ strike.
A one-day strike by Puerto Rican teachers over budget issues and the need for additional teachers shut down about 90% of the island’s 1,500 public schools over the weekend.
CountertVortex editor and main contributor Bill Weinberg (that would be me) is currently without phone service, and only intermittent Internet access, due to a Verizon equipment failure. The last Verizon chat-jockey I spoke with said "it is major cable issue and will need some time to be solved." That basically means they don't intend to fix it. I use DSL and a land-line—going through the old copper wires that Verizon is trying to phase out. If my service is not restored, I will have no means of producing CounterVortex—or the journalism I must write every day to pay the rent. Many people in New York and around the country are in the same position. We urgently must press Verizon to maintain the old copper-wire infrastructure we depend on—which they are required to do by law. (Photo: IBEW)
French prosecutors issued international arrest warrants for three prominent Syrian officials charged with collusion in crimes against humanity, in what human rights lawyers are calling a major victory in the pursuit of those believed responsible for mass torture, abuse and summary executions in the regime's detention facilities. The warrants name three leading security officials—including Ali Mamlouk, a former intelligence chief and senior adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, as well as head of the Air Force Intelligence security branch, Jamil Hassan. A third, Abdel Salam Mahmoud—an Air Force Intelligence officer who reportedly runs a detention facility at al-Mezzeh military base near Damascus—was also named. Hassan and Mamlouk are the most senior Syrian officials to receive an international arrest warrant throughout the course of the conflict. (Photo of hunger strikers at Syrian prison via Foreign Policy. Credit: Louai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images)
In its latest quarterly report to Congress, the US watchdog for Afghan reconstruction finds that the security situation is at an all-time low since monitoring began. Since the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) began tracking district control in 2015, Afghan government-controlled or "influenced" districts have declined 16% to 55.5%. In the same period, areas of insurgent control or influence rose 5.5% while "contested" districts increased 11%. As of late July, the US military assessed that the Kabul government controls or influences 226 of Afghanistan's 407 districts, while the Taliban controls/influences 49. The remaining 132 districts are identified as "contested." Since the prior quarterly report, Operation Resolute Support downgraded eight districts from "government influenced" to "contested." SIGAR said Afghan security forces "made minimal or no progress in pressuring the Taliban" in the period covered by the report. (Photo via Stars & Stripes)
Bedouin children wander away from their home in al-Hadidiya village in the West Bank, which is now within a closed military zone claimed by the Israeli army Photo: Phoebe Greenwood/IRIN
Private security firm Blackwater violated US arms trafficking regulations when training Colombian military personnel for service in Iraq in 2005, a State Department report shows.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos promised to return 6 million hectares of farmland stolen by right-wing paramilitary groups after the original owners were forcibly displaced.
Authorities in Colombia’s southern Nariño department found the bodies of Ramiro Inampues and his wife, Maria Lina Galindez, two Guachucal indigenous leaders who had been shot by unknown assassins.
Four people were detained for an attack on Chinese military police in the far western region of Xinjiang. Six police were killed and 15 injured in the first major terrorist attack in China since 2008.
Selig Harrison writes in the New York Times that China's People's Liberation Army has taken effective control of the northern Himalayan enclaves of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir.
