Police in Yulin, Shaanxi province, detained eight people following a July 17 clash at a coal mine that left dozens injured. The eight suspects include both residents of nearby Fanjiahe village, Hengshan county, and workers at the Shandong Coal Mine. The clash involved nearly 200 and left 87 injured, authorities said. It began when more than 100 villagers, armed with shovels and other tools, entered the mining site and smashed equipment in a bid to stop production.

In what is possibly the worst oil spill in China's history, some 430 square kilometers of the Yellow Sea are covered with a slick following a July 16 explosion at a pipeline terminal in the northeast port of Dalian. At least one worker has drowned in crude during the clean-up operation. The slick has doubled in size despite earlier government assurances that it was being contained. Supplies have been cut to two local PetroChina refineries. The terminal receives crude from Yellow Sea rigs run by the China National Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC). The Chinese government estimates the spill at 400,000 gallons. A Beijing-based biotechnology company, Weiyeyuan, is providing 23 tons of oil-eating bacteria to help clean up the slick. (BGN, WSJ, July 22; The Guardian, July 21; China Daily, July 20)

On July 21, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, released a report he commissioned from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) on the Merida Initiative. Western Hemisphere Subcommittee ranking member Connie Mack (R-FL) joined Engel's request for the report, which argues that current evaluation mechanisms for the Merida Initiative need improvement. The report also finds that Merida funding funding has been mired in bureaucratic hurdles, but is now moving to Mexico and Central America at a much more rapid pace.

Colombia asked the Organization of American States July 16 to convene a meeting of its permanent council to address Bogotá's accusation that guerillas are operating out of Venezuelan territory. The request came a day after President Alvaro Uribe's office announced it had "clear evidence" that four leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and one leader of the National Liberation Army (ELN) are "sheltering" in Venezuela.

Nearly 400 have been killed in recent clashes between the Sudanese army and Darfur's main rebel group, according to Sudanese state media. Most of the casualties were members of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). UN peacekeepers in Darfur confirmed that there were at least two major clashes between the two sides. Gen. Al-Tayeb al-Musbah, of the Sudanese army, told the state-run Suna news agency that the army destroyed "scores of JEM vehicles" during the fighting.

A mosque and adjoining shrines were destroyed in an explosion at Ashkail village in the Khyber tribal region's Landi Kotal tehsil (district), near the Afghan border in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on July 15. The Ishkhel mosque was 100 years old, and the adjacent shrines were older, some holding the remains of Sufi saints. There were no casualties, but hours later a bomb blast tore through a crowded market at Meharban Kaley in the Khyber Agency's Tiraah Valley, killing 10, including three children, and injuring 20. Five people were also killed and 55 others wounded that same day when a suicide blast ripped through a busy bus stand in Mingora Swat, North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), where local residents were celebrating an Aman Mela (Peace Festival) to promote reconciliation efforts.

The Jundallah, a Sunni militant organization whose leader was recently executed by Iranian authorities, claimed responsibility July 16 for two coordinated suicide blasts the previous night that killed at least 27 people, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guard, and injured 270 others during an evening prayer ceremony at the Grand Mosque in Zahedan. The group said its goal was to kill members of the Revolutionary Guard and avenge the arrest and hanging of its leader, Abdulmalak Rigi.

Southern District of New York Judge John G. Koeltl decided July 15 to increase disbarred attorney Lynne Stewart's sentence from 28 months to 10 years. Stewart was found guilty in 2005 of distributing press releases on behalf of her imprisoned client Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the "Blind Sheikh," in violation of "special administrative measures."