Protests greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Brazil at the start of a South American tour. In Rio de Janeiro, thousands of gays, artists, Jews, and Holocaust survivors marched in protest of the visit.
The Afghan attorney general announced that two cabinet ministers are being investigated on corruption charges—a week after President Karzai vowed in his inaugural address to fight corruption.
An Algerian court acquitted former two Guantánamo detainees. Their lawyer said that while the men admitted to involvement in theft and drug trafficking, they denied any link with terrorism.
A Chinese court sentenced human rights activist Huang Qi, a critic of the government’s handling of the Sichuan earthquake, to three years in prison for illegally holding state secrets.
The government of the Czech Republic expressed regret over the illegal sterilizations of mostly Roma women that have been performed in the country in recent years.
Panama’s National Police used tear gas to allow cattle company bulldozers to destroy the Naso indigenous settlement of La Trinchera on contested land in Bocas del Toro province.
A Sandinista party member was killed and an undetermined number of Liberal Party opposition followers injured in clashes between rival demonstrators on highways around Nicaragua.
Magaly Janeth Moreno Vega AKA “La Perla,” wanted by Interpol as a leader of the Colombian paramilitaries, was arrested by Venezuelan authorities—as Hugo Chávez hailed Carlos the Jackal.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says the Palestinian conflict has left almost 8,900 people dead over the last 20 years—with 2009 the bloodiest.
After months of dialogue, the Turkish government announced a plan to help end the 25-year conflict with a Kurdish separatist movement that has cost more than 40,000 lives.
The Iraqi parliament has failed to resolve an impasse threatening to delay the country’s election—which could affect the US military’s plans for a partial pullout next year.
Plaintiffs in the civil suit against Blackwater over the 2007 Nisur Square massacre are divided on whether to accept a settlement. The case now heads for an evidentiary hearing.
