The Iraqi oil ministry's auction of three natural gas fields last week has been angrily opposed by all the governorates in which they are located, with provincial officials threatening legal action against Baghdad and warning that they will refuse to cooperate with the developers. Bids were granted to companies from Turkey, Kuwait, Kazakstan and South Korea to develop gas fields holding approximately 10% of the country's reserves. The fields in Anbar, Diyala and Basra are primarily being developed for domestic consumption to improve Iraq's feeble power supply, oil ministry officials said.

Some 4,000 indigenous people ended their blockade of the Río Marañon in northern Peru Oct. 30, after reaching an agreement with the government and Argentine oil company Pluspetrol. After an oil spill in June, Peru's government started distributing food and goods to the people most affected in the region. However, with Pluspetrol declaring the pollution problem resolved, the government has cut off aid—in spite of indigenous complaints that their lands and waters are still impacted. The agreement calls for peace on both sides until the government's water authority can test the Marañon for pollution. (EFE, Earth First!, Oct. 30)

Up to 3,000 villagers are facing arrest after taking part in a "silent protest" against the Jaitapur nuclear power project in India's Maharashtra state Oct. 29. The villagers, upset about the lack of transparency surrounding the project, organized a "Jail Bharo" (fill up the jail) protest, by showing up at the project site to await their arrest. The government reacted by issuing "preventive arrest" warrants, prohibitory orders and setting up road blocks. According to media reports, 750 people were arrested including a former Supreme Court Judge. (Times of India, Oct. 29)

A Guatemalan judge sentenced two former national police officers to 40 years in prison Oct. 28 over the February 1984 disappearance of union leader 27-year-old Fernándo García, the first case to use evidence discovered in abandoned police archives. García, an organizer at the Cavisa maquiladora, was on his way to work when he was shot, taken to a police hospital and never seen again. Evidence in the archive, found covered in bat droppings in a rat-infested former munitions dump in Guatemala City in 2005, implicated police officers Hector Ramírez and Abraham Gómez. "Everything indicates that the accused were definitely in the place where Fernando Garcia was detained," Judge Odilia González said at the hearing.

A suicide bomber struck Istanbul's Taksim Square the morning of Oct. 31, injuring at least 32 in the city's busiest node. The apparent targets were police officers at a substation at the square's north end. At least 15 of those injured were police. The attack came on the last day of the unilateral ceasefire declared by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The so-called "no-action period" had been extended for one month on Sept. 30. (LAT, EÖ/VK, Oct. 31)

From Human Rights Watch, Oct. 28:

Roma and related minority groups deported from Western Europe to Kosovo face discrimination and severe deprivation amounting to human rights abuse, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

An anti-terrorism forum held this week in Nouakchott, Mauritania's capital, called for a "national charter" to face the threat of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and for "dialogue with the extremists" who are willing to surrender. It also recommended "creation of a center that would teach the culture of moderation" and a social policy to "dry up the sources of terrorism and extremism by fighting ignorance, poverty and exclusion." However, Defense Minister Hamadi Ould Hamadi ended the forum with a shout of: "We will never negotiate with those who bear arms against their country, we will respond to them with weapons!"

Police in the Mexican Gulf Coast city of Villahermosa rescued at least 23 Honduran undocumented immigrants, including six children, who were kidnapped for ransom, the Tabasco state prosecutor's office said Oct. 28. Two Mexico citizens were also arrested and charged in the kidnapping. The migrants were reportedly intercepted in the town of Palenque in in neighboring Chiapas state, near the Guatemalan border. At the time of their abduction, the hostages were forced to hand over information about their relatives in Honduras so that they can be forced to deliver ransom money, authorities said. (AFP, Oct. 28)