An attack July 12 on a Sinai gas pipeline pumping Egyptian natural gas to Israel and Jordan interrupted supply for the fourth time this year. A guard was wounded in the attack, which witnesses said was carried out by men driving two SUVs, and targeted a monitoring station near the airport in al-Arish, north Sinai’s largest town. The incident comes a week after a separate bomb attack on the pipeline reduced the flow of gas to Israel. No group has claimed responsibility for of the attacks, but authorities suspect Sinai-based Bedouins. The pipeline has long been a source of political controversy in Egypt, particularly since the signing of a 20-year gas export deal with Israel in 2008. (OnIslam, FT, The Guardian, July 12)

Ahmed Wali Karzai—half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, head of the Kandahar Provincial Council, and the province's de facto ruling warlord—was assassinated July 12 at one of his five mansions by a senior commander of his own security detail, Sardar Mohammad. The assassin—a member of Karzai’s extended clan, the Popalzai, and a trusted family associate for decades—was immediately gunned down by the other bodyguards. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. The Interior Ministry says an investigation is underway and several people who were guarding the home have been taken into custody. Cables released by WikiLeaks last year revealed suspicions by US diplomats that Karzai was involved in Afghan's opium trade. After one meeting with US envoy Frank Ruggiero in September 2009, the diplomat said of Karzai, known by the acronym "AWK": "While we must deal with AWK as the head of the provincial council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker." (AFP, ABC, MSNBC World Blog, July 12)

The Israeli army last week began tearing down a section of its separation barrier in the West Bank near Bil'in village, where weekly protests have become a symbol of opposition to the wall's encroachment on Palestinian land. The rerouting of the barrier, after long delays, was a rare instance in which Israeli military officials were forced to change plans by a court order. It comes four years after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on a petition by villagers that the barrier's route did not serve security needs, but cut through village farmland for purposes of expanding the adjacent Israeli settlement of Modi’in Ilit, a fast-growing town of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The court ordered the barrier torn down and rebuilt closer to the settlement.

Salva Kiir was officially been sworn in July 9 as the first president of South Sudan, moments after he signed the country’s transitional constitution before tens of thousands in the new republic's capital, Juba. Wearing his trademark cowboy hat, Kiir repeated his offer of an amnesty to the six rebel groups that have risen in South Sudan: “I want to offer public amnesty to all those who took arms against the people of South Sudan. Let them lay down these arms and help us in building this new nation,” Kiir said. He also pledged to work for a resolution to the conflicts in the border enclave of Abyei, and the North Sudan regions of Darfur and Kordofan. "I want to assure the people of Abyei, Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan that we have not forgotten you. When you cry, we cry. When you bleed, we bleed. I pledge to you today that we will find a just peace for all," he said. (Sudan Tribune, July 9)

The Kichwa people of Sarayaku, a remote community in Ecuador's Amazonian province of Pastaza, have brought suit against the Quito government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in Costa Rica. The case charges that Ecuador signed a contract with Argentina's General Combustible Company (CGC) to explore and drill and drill for oil in an area known as Block 23, covering part of Sarayaku’s ancestral territory, in 1996. The indigenous community was not consulted, even though it was granted legal title to its lands in 1992. In 2002 and early 2003, the Ecuadoran armed forces occupied the lands in question as workers began seismic testing, at which time Sarayaku leaders were threatened and harassed for defending their territory, the suit charges.

In the early hours of July 9, FARC guerillas attacked the central plaza of the indigenous Nasa village Toribio in Colombia's Cauca department, leaving two civilian residents dead and 73 injured. The attack, with improvised explosives, came at the start of a market day in the village. One National Police officer was also killed, and three injured. Damage was caused to several homes, small businesses and public buildings in 400 square-meter area. The injured were evacuated from the village for medical treatment. In a statement, the region's traditional indigenous authorities said the attack "demonstrates the deterioration of the guerillas and the total disrespect of all the armed actors for life and human dignity."

Famed Argentine folksinger Facundo Cabral was shot to death early July 9 by unknown gunmen who ambushed his car on the way to the airport in Guatemala City. A total of eight bullets struck Cabral and his Nicaraguan concert promoter Henry Fariña. The singer’s white Range Rover and a Chevrolet Tahoe carrying his bodyguards attempted to seek cover in a fire station. A firefighter witnessed gunfire from two black vehicles. Initial claims that the attack was an armed robbery have now been dropped; there is some speculation that Fariña, who survived, was the actual target of the attack. Authorities said one of the attackers’ vehicles, pock-marked with bullet-holes and strewn with casings, has been located in El Salvador. Cabral, 74, rose to fame in the 1970s, an icon of protest music in an era of harsh repression across Latin America. Guatemala's President Alvaro Colom personally called his Argentine counterpart, Cristina Fernandez, to tell her of the slaying. (NDTV, LAT, La Republica, Lima, July 10; ThirdAge, July 9)

The Honduras Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein, presented the report to current Honduran President Porfirio Lobos, Honduran chief justice Jorge Rivera Avilez and OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza in Tegucigalpa July 7. The report concludes that the June 28, 2009 removal from office of former President Manuel Zelaya was in fact a coup d'etat—and not a constitutional succession as some of Zelaya's opponents claimed. The report further asserted that National Congress overstepped its powers when it nominated its speaker Roberto Micheletti as interim president. According to the commission, the interim administration was therefore illegal and a "de facto regime."