Diplomatic sources say Moscow brokered a long-sought deal granting the US continued access to Manas air base in Kyrgyzstan—apparently fearing Islamist militant incursions into Central Asia.
Militant cleric Sufi Mohammed, who brokered the failed Swat Valley peace deal, has been arrested and transferred to a “safehouse” in Peshawar, an unnamed official told Italy’s AKI news service.
More voices are raised calling for the West to play a Sufi card against Islamist insurgents in Somalia, as well as Pakistan and elsewhere. But will this only destroy the Sufis’ credibility?
A sharia court run by Somalia’s Shabab insurgents in Mogadishu sentenced four teenagers to each have a hand and a leg amputated as punishment for stealing cellphones.
A suicide bomber severely wounded Yunus Bek Yevkurov, president of Russia’s volatile southern republic of Ingushetia—an assassination attempt that undermines the Kremlin’s claim that it has brought stability to the restive North Caucasus. A car rigged with TNT exploded as… Read moreIngushetia: president wounded in suicide attack
Spanish police arrested three suspected ETA suspects in Guipúzcoa June 23. The Interior Ministry said the three formed an “armed commando” which was prepared to go into action immediately, but denied it was responsible for a June 19 car bomb… Read moreSpain: ETA cell busted?
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime finds that coca cultivation declined 18% in Colombia last year, while it expanded 6% in Bolivia and 4.5% in Peru.
Salvatore Miceli, dubbed the “Mafia’s foreign minister,” will be deported to Italy after his capture in Caracas June 21 in a joint operation by Venezuelan and Italian police.
While the fate of dozens of detained students remains in limbo, students at universities across Iran continue daily sit-ins to protests what they are calling the “electoral coup” of June 12.
At least 45 were killed in a US drone strike in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region. Those killed had been attending a funeral for others killed in a US drone strike earlier in the day.
Indigenous protesters set fire to equipment at the Canadian-owned Marlin gold mine in western Guatemala, saying the company illegally operated on their land, endangering their water supply.
In a win for peasant protesters who blockaded the construction site, a judge in the Dominican Republic ordered a halt to a cement plant slated for lands near Los Haitises National Park.
