At least 14 people have been killed, and dozens more injured, amid clashes between police and drug traffickers in Rio de Janeiro over the past two weeks. Vila Cruzeiro favela, one of the impoverished districts hardest hit by the violence, remains a war zone. "It's absurd! Police have been here for two weeks, bullets flying all over the place, children cannot go to school, and the traffickers don't even hide," said a 56-year-old grandmother in Vila Cruzeiro, who identified herself only as Rose. Authorities intend to launch more police occupations of the favelas and are considering bringing in military Black Hawk helicopters to bolster the city’s security prior to hosting the Pan-American Games in July. (Reuters, May 16)

The heads of Russia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan—Vladimir Putin, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov—met in Turkmenistan May 12 and formalized a decision to build a new gas pipeline along the coast of the Caspian Sea. The new pipeline will carry gas from Central Asia to global markets through Russian territory, shoring up Moscow's position as a main supplier of Europe's energy needs. The project may mean the end of Western plans to build a trans-Caspian pipeline bypassing Russian territory. (New Europe, May 18)

In one of his boldest moves since his swearing-in three months ago, Turkmenistan's President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov has sacked a top security official who helped build the oppressive regime of the late Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov. Official media announced that Akmurad Rejepov, head of the presidential security service, is being transferred to "another job," which was not specified. Nor was a replacement announced. Analysts cautiously view this as evidence of a post-Niyazov political opening.

New satellite analysis shows that at least once in the past several years, masses of unusually warm air—up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit—pushed to within 300 miles of the South Pole, melting surface snow across an expanse the size of California. The warm spell, which occurred over one week in 2005, was detected by scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and the University of Colorado at Boulder. The findings were based on data from NASA's QuickSCAT satellite system which uses radar to distinguish the ice signatures of melting in the Antarctic snow. This is the first time melt zones have been detected so far inland. "It is too soon to know whether the warm spell was a fluke or a portent, said JPL scientist Son Nghiem. "It is vital we continue monitoring this region to determine if a long-term trend may be developing." (NYT, May 16)

On May 15, wealthy landowner Vitalmiro Bastos de Moura was given the maximum sentence, 30 years, for being one of the masterminds of the February 2005 murder of US-born nun Dorothy Stang, a 73-year-old defender of the Amazon rainforest and landless people. It is the first conviction of a member of Pará state's landed elite in a wave of killings of peasant leaders and forest defenders in recent years.

Imprisoned Colombian paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso fingered the nation's vice president, defense minister and two of it's top conglomerates as collaborators in an explosive judicial hearing. He also said the paramilitaries, branded "foreign terrorist organizations" by Washington in 2001, were aided by top army brass in training and logistics. Mancuso said he would offer details later. In press interviews last week, he promised details of how multinational companies including all banana exporters helped bankroll the paramilitaries. President Alvaro Uribe said in a radio interview that he had "every confidence in the honesty and moral fiber" of Vice President Francisco Santos and Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos.

Sonora state police killed 15 in a fierce gunbattle just south of the Arizona border May 16 after tracking into the hills a group of heavily-armed gunmen who earlier that day killed five municipal police in Cananea. Three Cananea residents who had been aducted were freed. Police seized 15 assault rifles following the hours-long shoot-out near the village of Arizpe. Meanwhile in Coahuila, four men in the black unforms and insignia of the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI) kidnapped the state‘s chief anti-kidnapping investigator, Ruiz Arevalo, in Torreon. (El Universal, El Tiempo, AP, May 16)

From the Zochrot (Remembering), a group of Israeli citizens working to raise awareness of the Nakba, the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948:

International Nakba Day, May 15, 2007
The Nakba is the story of the Palestinian tragedy: the destruction of communities, civilization, culture and identity, the expulsion and the killing that took place in 1948. It is a story that constitutes the past and present of the Palestinian people and shapes a large part of Palestinian identity. Yet in many respects the Nakba is also the story of Jews who live in Israel. A story that is not easy to cope with, a story that raises difficult questions about the possibilities of life together in the space that is today the state of Israel.