Somalia marked its 50th anniversary of independence from colonial rule with bullets on one end of the country and ballots on the other, as independent Somaliland held free elections.
A new US drone strike killed four in North Waziristan. According to a count by Iran’s Press TV, the US has launched 36 drone strikes in Pakistan since January, killing at least 390.
At least nine ethnic Hazara men were killed in a Taliban ambush and possibly beheaded. The Taliban carried out a campaign of genocide against the Hazaras during their years in power.
Human Rights Watch urged Hamas authorities to allow captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit to communicate with his family and receive visits from the International Committee of the Red Cross.
President Alan García refused to sign an historic new law to recognize Peru’s obligation to consult with indigenous peoples before proceeding with resource extraction projects that affect them.
Foreign Affairs Minister José Antonio García Belaunde dismissed findings of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime that Peru is poised to overtake Colombia as the Andes’ top coca producer.
Barack Obama’s replacement of Gen. Stanley McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus as commander of US forces in Afghanistan appears to represent a strategic shift within the administration.
Sweden’s international prosecutor announced that he will open an investigation into the possible role of Lundin Petroleum in crimes against humanity committed in Sudan.
The US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the section of the PATRIOT Act criminalizing speech on behalf of groups designated “terrorist organizations” does not violate the First Amendment.
The number of trade unionists murdered around the world increased by 30% in 2009, according to an annual survey released by the Brussels-based International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Venezuela’s Fedecámaras filed a complaint at a meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva against the labor and business policies of President Hugo Chávez’s leftist government.
Mexico’s independent labor movement reacted angrily to the government’s use of hundreds of police agents to break a three-year strike at the giant Cananea copper mine in northern Sonora state.
