Ninety oil workers have been evacuated from a North Sea rig as engineers fight to control a huge build-up of pressure in a well that may have the potential to blow up the platform. Norwegian company Statoil partly evacuated the Gullfaks oil rig off on May 20 following unexpected fluctuations in pressure. The company said all 89 non-essential workers were taken off the rig as a precaution, while the other remained to try to normalize pressure. Pressure levels remain unstable a week later. Workers are pumping cement into the well in an operation similar to that being attempted by BP in the Gulf of Mexico.

Alberto Pizango, exiled president of Peru's national organization for Amazonian indigenous peoples, AIDESEP, was arrested May 26 at Lima's airport as he arrived from Nicaragua, where he was granted political asylum in the aftermath of last June's Bagua massacre. He faces charges of "sedition, conspiracy and rebellion" for his alleged role in the Amazon violence. AIDESEP sees the charges as part of a wider campaign by the government to undermine Peru's indigenous movement.

Gregorio Sánchez Martínez, a gubernatorial candidate from the Yucatan Peninsula state of Quintana Roo, was arrested by Mexican federal police May 25 as he arrived at Cancún airport on a flight from Mexico City. He faces charges of drug trafficking, money laundering and organized crime, with federal prosecutors accusing him of provided information and protection to Los Zetas and the Beltran Leyva gang. But supporters of Sánchez, who recently took a leave as Cancún's mayor to run for governor, condemned the charges as politically motivated.

The Indian government has offered to hold talks with the Naxalite insurgents following a series of audacious attacks that have hardliners calling for air-strikes on their strongholds in the country's eastern jungles. The offer is dependent upon the Maoists agreeing to a 72-hour ceasefire, and has been met with no response from the rebels. (The Telegraph, May 20)

New Yorker Lori Berenson was paroled from a Peruvian prison May 25 after spending 15 years behind bars, Judge Jessica León Yarango rejecting prosecutors' warnings that she remains a "dangerous" terrorist. In her ruling, León said Berenson had "completed re-education, rehabilitation and re-socialization," and demonstrated "positive behavior." Berenson, 40, and her year-old prison-born son, are to be freed in the coming days, reports say.

Gun battles raging in the Jamaican capital have left more than 60 people dead, hospital sources said May 25, as troops fanned out across the city hunting for accused drug kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke. Police put the death toll at 27, but Prime Minister Bruce Golding admits the actual figure may be much higher. "The government deeply regrets the loss of lives of members of the security forces, and those of innocent law abiding citizens who were caught in the cross fire," Golding said. Hospital workers said the victims were mostly civilians.

A former Colombian police major, Juan Carlos Meneses, has come forward to allege that Santiago Uribe, younger brother of President Alvaro Uribe, led a paramilitary group in the 1990s in the northern town of Yarumal, Antioquia department, that killed petty thieves, guerrilla sympathizers and suspected "subversives." In an interview with the Washington Post, Meneses said the group's hit men trained at La Carolina, a ranch owned by the Uribe family, in the early 1990s. "This is what we have been hoping for—that something like this could come out, and we could show what these paramilitary groups were," said María Eugenia López. She said five of her relatives were killed by paramilitaries in Yarumal in 1990.

Running battles between police and gunmen of the Shower Posse gang turned part of Jamaica's capital Kingston into a warzone on May 24, with reports of explosions and civilian casualties. Two police were killed the previous day as police moved in to arrest accused kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke for extradition to the US. The confirmed death toll has now reached three, as a soldier was killed breaking through street barricades in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood. National Security Minister Dwight Nelson said on national television that he had received reports of several civilian deaths and desperate pleas from residents pinned inside buildings by gunfire. Police and soldiers have begun house-to-house searches for Dudus Coke.