A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron denied there are any British combat troops on the ground in Libya folloing press reports claiming SAS forces have been spotted in Misrata. The spokesman said: "Any military activity we undertake will be in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1973. I am not making any statement about people who have been photographed." The Daily Mirror ran photographs on its front page purporting to show 11 former SAS and Parachute Regiment men aiding the rebel forces in Misrata. The Guardian said it had learned from its own sources that ex-SAS soldiers were helping NATO to identify targets in Misrata. But the prime minister's office insisted that the only British personnel in Libya were a joint Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Ministry of Defence team in Benghazi. The spokesman said: "I don't think it would be right for me to go into details about the security arrangements for the team. But clearly we take their security very seriously and have arrangements in place. We have been very clear about what the MOD/FCO team is there to do. They provide various forms of support for the Transitional National Council, to help them in the organisation of their internal structures, helping them with communications." (BBC News, June 1)

A new bill in the Knesset would change Jerusalem neighborhoods with Arabic names to Hebrew ones—Mamilla, Talbiya or Holyland becoming the Hagoshrim, Komemiyut and Eretz HaTzvi. MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) introduced the bill, and it has received endorsements by many other Knesset members from both the Likud-led ruling coalition and the opposition. "The purpose is to strengthen the bond to Jerusalem by enforcing the use of Hebrew names for the capital's neighborhoods where Jews reside," said Hotovely. The bill would apply to any neighborhood with Jewish residents. Old names would remain unchanged, but have a secondary status to the new Hebrew ones. The Jerusalem city government would have to complete the Hebraization of all city neighborhoods, replace the signposts and not use the previous names in any official matter. Several Arab-majority districts would be affected. The Palestinian town of Abu Dis (dissected by a security barrier with the western part under the Jerusalem government) will become Kidmat Zion. (YNet, May 30)

An editorial from the New York Daily News, May 31:

Noncommercial, counterculture icon WBAI radio spirals into self-destructive 9/11-conspiracy madness

Lefty radio station WBAI-FM sure ain't what it used to be. No, it has gone off the dial as a peddler of vile 9/11 conspiracy theories.

At least two people were killed and six wounded by three explosions within an hour on May 26 at government office buildings in Fuzhou, in southern China's Jiangxi province. The targets were the Fuzhou Procurator's Office, the Linzhuan District government building and the Linzhuan Food and Drug Administration office. The attacker was said to ben unemployed man named Qian Mingqi, 52, who was himself among those killed in the blasts. Reports indicated Qian was a farmer angry over the handling of a court case. Feeds he posted on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, protested that his home was demolished in 2002 to make way for a new highway, without adequate compensation: "My newly built home was demolished illegally so that I incurred a great loss. After ten years of futile petitioning, I am forced to take a path I don't want to take. I want to seek justice but there's no justice; jackals and wolves are everywhere in Linchuan district in Fuzhou." During his fight to keep his home, Qian's wife was hung upside down by a demolition team, and died a few days later. His land seized for the new Beijing-Fujian expressway was never built on, and remains vacant. (Spero News, May 28; NYT, May 26)

Some 1,600 Jewish worshipers escorted by Israeli soldiers visited the the West Bank holy site of Joseph's Tomb for late night prayers May 30—and some 50 then refused to leave when the allotted time for the visit was over, and had to be forcibly removed by the troops.Three were arrested. After the confrontation, villagers south of nearby Nablus reported seeing dozens of settlers set fire to agricultural lands. A settlement monitoring official with Fatah, Ghassan Doughlus, told Ma'an News Agency that residents of Madama village, whose lands were torched, believed the settlers were from the illegal residential community of Yitzhar, known for its militancy. Village official Ihab Al-Qett said local Palestinian fire crews were able to put out fires before significant damage was done.

Two NATO air-strikes in Afghanistan May 29 again killed civilian villagers, outraged residents ad local officials said. One strike on Nawzad in Helmand province, apparently launched in response to an attack by the Taliban on US Marine forces, killed 14. Officials said that all of the dead were women and children, and that of the six injured, only two were men, both unarmed civilians. President Hamid Karzai’s office issued a formal statement condemning the attack. The other strike took place in the Doab district of remote northeastern province of Nuristan, and killed 38 civilians, 20 of whom were part of the local police force, local officials said. The police officers were apparently engaged in ground fighting with the Taliban insurgents. Afghan TV showed images of the Nawzad casualties being taken into hospitals and bereaved relatives cradling the bodies of several young children wrapped in bloody sheets. A NATO spokesman said that an investigation was under way. (The Guardian, Gamut, May 29)

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has maintained for months that he'll stand by his agreement for the withdrawal of all US troops from the country by the end of this year, has in recent weeks done a turnaround—now saying he'd support keeping some troops in Iraq after the deadline. Maliki outlined his position at a press conference, saying he's willing to meet Iraq's elected officials and consider whether some US troops should stay beyond this December. "We won't get unanimous agreement on this issue," Maliki said. "But if we get 70 or 80 percent, isn't that the will of the people? Isn't this the democracy we have worked so hard for?" (NPR, May 29).

Thousands of Aymara indigenous protesters took over the city center of Puno in southeastern Peru May 26, and the city remains shut down. The main roads into the city are blocked by barricades erected by local campesinos demanding that the government revoke concessions recently granted to the Canadian Bear Creek mining company. Looters taking advantage of the unrest ransacked shops and offices as the police retreated, and numerous cars and government buildings were torched. Aymara from the Bolivian side of the border have joined in the roadblocks. With police confined to barracks, the city and environs are effectively in the hands of the protesters.