The National Court of Spain July 14 dismissed charges against three US soldiers who were accused of being involved in the death of Spanish cameraman José Couso. The soldiers allegedly opened fire on a Baghdad hotel frequented by Western journalists in 2003 without provocation, killing two cameramen.

At least nine were killed—including seven children—and more than 70 wounded July 13 in a bomb blast at at the home of a cleric Hafiz Riaz in central Pakistan, where children had gathered for religious education. Several houses were destroyed in the blast, on the outskirts of Mian Channu, 250 kilometers east of Lahore in Punjab province. It is not known if the blast was a terror attack, or if explosives the cleric himself had stored at the house accidentally detonated. (The Hindu, AKI, July 13)

The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) has filed a legal case with the Specialized Prosecutor for Organized Crime against the coup plotters and perpetrators. The complaint demands "that the investigation of these crimes proceed immediately, that the people responsible for their commission be identified... that orders for imprisonment be issued, and [that] the national police and Interpol be instructed regarding their immediate detention." (Rights Action, July 14)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. From AP, July 10:

Supermax prison: Obama's books objectionable
The federal government's most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material "potentially detrimental to national security" and rejected an inmate's request to read them.

Members of Congress July 13 called for an investigation into a secret CIA program designed to kill al-Qaeda members. The call follows the recently publicized information that former vice-president Dick Cheney directly ordered the CIA to withhold information about the program from Congress and kept it secret for eight years.

President Barack Obama says he is collecting facts about the killing of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners in November 2001, reportedly by fighters of a US-backed warlord in northern Afghanistan, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum. But rights observers say they believe US forces could have been directly involved in the mass slaying.

The bombing of the Virgin Fatima Church in Mosul July 12—hours after a wave of attacks on churches in Baghdad—brings the total to seven churches bombed in Iraq over the weekend. The bombings came even though Assyrian Christian sources warned of the impending attacks days ago. Four have been killed and more than 30 injured in the apparently coordinated terror campaign.

On the evening of July 11 a group of men entered the home of Honduran activist Roger Bados in the 6 de Mayo neighborhood of the northern city of San Pedro Sula and shot him dead. Bados was the former president of the union at a local cement factory and a member of the leftist Democratic Unification Party (UD) and of the Popular Bloc, a coalition of grassroots organizations active in the struggle against the military coup that overthrew President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales on June 28. Erasto Reyes, another grassroots leader, told the Venezula-based television network TeleSUR that the murder came at "a moment in which the political crisis is aggravating the security situation for leaders." But he said the organizations will continue to carry out "peaceful, nonviolent" mobilizations. "We're not letting down our guard; we're continuing in the struggle."