Nicaragua’s National Assembly ratified the only international law for indigenous peoples’ rights, International Labor Organization Convention 169, making it the 22nd country to do so.
Over 500 northern British Columbia residents gathered in Kitamaat Village to oppose the Northern Gateway Pipeline plan, which would bring oil supertankers to the BC Coast.
Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, operational leader for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, was apparently killed in a US drone strike at the village of Miranshah, North Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
In a 5-4 decision in the Michigan murder case Berghuis v. Thompkins, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority further eroded Miranda rights for criminal suspects.
The UN Security Council has called for a “prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation” into the deadly Israeli raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip.
Tropical storm “Agatha” has left nearly 200 dead across Central America, as a new study warns of a grave toll on local farmers from global climate change.
Edmond Mulet, acting head of the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), issued an apology for an incursion by a group of Brazilian soldiers into the State University of Haiti (UEH).
Barack Obama signed into law a measure intended to promote renewed development of the low-wage apparel assembly industry in Haiti—protested by activists as a “humanitarian alibi.”
In an interview on Spanish CCN, Honduran president Porfirio Lobo Sosa agreed that the removal of former president Manuel (“Mel”) Zelaya (2006-2009) from office on June 28, 2009 was a coup d’état.
Some 600 Mexican federal police agents used tear gas and nightsticks to remove about 100 members of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) from outside a power substation in Cuernavaca.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States (OAS) ordered the Guatemalan government to suspend operations at the Marlin gold mine within 20 days.
At its annual convention in Denver, the National Congress of American Indians spoke strongly against the Trump administration’s decision to halt the restoration of ancestral lands to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe of Massachusetts, invoking a return to the disastrous policies of the “termination era.” At issue are 321 acres where the Wampanoag sought to build a casino. The US Interior Department issued a decision in 2015 to take the lands into trust for the trib, and ground was broken on the casino the following year. But opponents challenged the land transfer in the courts. In April 2016, a federal judge found the Interior decision had bypassed the Supreme Court’s 2009 ruling in Carcieri v Salazar, concerning a land recovery effort by the Narragansett Indian Nation of Rhode Island. In the Carcieri case, the high court ruled that the federal government had no power to grant land in trust for tribes recognized after passage of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. In September of this year, the Interior decision was reversed by Tara Sweeney, the new assistant secretary for Indian Affairs. Sweeney determined that the Mashpee Wampanoag-—whose ancestors welcomed some of the first settlers to the Americas more than 300 years ago—could not have their homelands restored because they were only federally recognized in 2007. (Photo: Indianz.com)
