A court in Bilbao, Spain, issued a ruling Sept. 23 allowing demolish the building which until now has housed the Kukutza Gaztetxe squatter community center in the city's Rekalde district. Eviction of the property began on two days earlier. The decision after the Basque Country's Superior Court of Justice rejected a petition by the Errekaldeberriz residents association to halt the planned demolition and maintain the building as a youth center. (EITB, Sept. 23)

Thousands of villagers attacked government buildings in the southern Chinese city of Lufeng, Guangdong province, in a protest over land sales Sept. 22. The protests, in which around a dozen were hurt, were triggered by the seizure of several hectares of land and their sale to property developer Country Garden for 1 billion yuan ($156.6 million) at the village of Wukan. Witnesses said villagers were beaten after they surrounded a police station, armed with sticks and bricks. The government of Shanwei prefecture accused villagers of having "ulterior motives" and of "inciting" other villagers to charge into the police station by spreading rumors about police officers beating a child to death. At least four villagers have been detained.

As Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant went online last week, the government announced that $50 million has been allocated to resettle the 4,000 residents of the nearby villages of Heleylah and Bandargah. The relocation was ordered by Iran's tomic Energy Organization despite assurances that the plant is safe. A Russian engineer who worked on the plant, Alexander Bolgarov, meanwhile told the Associated Press of corner-cutting and ongoing technical problems at the site, including poor welding, accumulations of sludge in the reactor core, and malfunctioning turbines and emergency pumps. However, Bolgarov disputed reports that Bushehr's computerized control system had been infected last year by Stuxnet, the computer worm, which attacked other Iranian nuclear facilities.

Five days of armed clashes in the Yemeni capital Sanaa have left over 100 dead and hundreds more injured. Gunmen loyal to tribal chief Sheikh Sadiq al-Ahmar and defected soldiers under Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar are using shells and rifle fire against a camp that has been set up in the city by the Republican Guards, the country's elite troops led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh's elder son Ahmed Ali. Numerous civilians have been killed in the crossfire. Student protesters continue to occupy University Square—which they have dubbed "Change Square"—and have also come under mortar and sniper fire. (The Economist, Sept. 24; Xinhua, Sept. 23; AFP, Sept. 22; Yemen Post, Sept. 20)

The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Sept. 21 imposed Kingpin Act sanctions on four Colombian nationals and 12 companies said to be linked to Joaquín Guzmán Loera AKA "El Chapo"—head of Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmán faces charges in the US, but remains at large. (WSJ Corruption Currents blog, Sept. 20) The move comes amid increasing charges that US law enforcement—as well as the Mexican government—is favoring the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico's bloody narco wars.

Gunmen in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan attacked a bus carrying Shi'ite pilgrims to Iran on Sept. 20, killing at least 25. The driver of the bus told police that some 10 assailants ordered the pilgrims off the bus and then opened fire on them. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an extremist Sunni group believed to be responsible for previous attacks on Shi'ites in Baluchistan, claimed responsibility. The Shi'ites of Baluchistan are mostly members of the Hazara ethnic minority (which was the target of a campaign of genocide by the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan in the 1990s).

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez on Sept. 17 criticized the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) for ruling in favor of presidential hopeful Leopoldo López, thereby allowing him to run for office. A Venezuelan anti-corruption official had barred López from running for office after conducting a corruption investigation in 2005. Chávez called the IACHR, a body of the Organization of American States (OAS), part of an international system that "protects the corrupt and obeys the mandate of the imperial power and the bourgeoisie." He added: "What value can that court have? For me, it's worthless... One of my haircuts is worth more than this court"— a play on the fact that the Spanish corte means both "court" and "cut."

At least 24 were killed in Yemen's capital Sanaa on Sept. 18 as security forces opened fire on protesters calling for the ouster of longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The violence, Yemen's worst in months, began two days earlier, when tens of thousands gathered for Friday protests, to be met with gunfire from uniformed troops and plainclothes snipers as they marched toward government buildings. Following the initial fire, a sustained confrontation ensued. The Organizing Committee of the Popular Youth Revolution then called for sustained protests to remove the "remains of the regime."