Four protesters descended from a redwood at UC Berkeley Sept. 9, after 21 months—648 days—of occupying a contested campus grove. Protesters sought to stop construction of a $124-million athletic center, but a court injunction on the construction was recently lifted. All four tree-sitters were arrested, though campus officials said no felony charges would be filed. Five protesters were also arrested on the ground, charged with offenses including battery and resisting arrest. The tree-sitters' tree—one of a collection of 42 oaks, redwoods and others that protesters sought to save—is scheduled to be felled immediately.

When Russia's President Dmitri Medvedev formally recognized the Georgia's separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, activists in the Russian autonomous region of Tatarstan reacted quickly. The All-Tatar Civic Center published an appeal for Moscow's recognition of Tatarstan's independence. Rashit Akhmetov, editor of Zvezda Povolzhya, an opposition newspaper in Kazan, Tatarstan's capital, said, "Russia has lost the moral right not to recognize us."

Spanish Judge Balthasar Garzón has ordered government and religious authorities across Spain to turn over information about those killed at the hands of Francisco Franco's fascist forces following his 1936 military uprising. Garzón hopes to draw up a comprehensive list of victims in a bid to document human rights abuses outside of the theater of war. There is no official record of how many died on the Republican side during the three-year Civil War, which claimed the lives of some 500,000 Spaniards. More were killed for opposing Franco during his 36-year dictatorship. While the Franco regime honored its own dead, those of the losing side remained buried in unmarked graves across Spain.

A NATO air-strike in Afghanistan's Khost province missed its target Sept. 9, striking a house, killing two civilians and wounding 10. NATO said their forces were targeting an insurgent position when a weapon accidentally misfired, veering one and a half miles of course. "An immediate investigation into the cause of the incident has been launched and further details will be forthcoming once established," a NATO statement said. (BBC, ABC, Reuters, Sept. 9)

Iraqi state employees affiliated with the General Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (GFWCUI), following a campaign of demonstrations in central Baghdad that began Aug. 24, won an agreement from the Ministry of Finance to meet demands for improvement of living conditions and to rescind recently announced cuts in pay and benefits. The government also agreed to discuss workers' demands for public access to parliament sessions. Government talks are to begin with GFWCUI president Subhi al-Badri and vice president Saeed Nima. (GFWCUI via US Labor Against the War, Sept. 8)

From Human Rights Watch, Sept. 8:

Afghanistan: Civilian Deaths From Airstrikes on the Rise
Airstrikes Cause Public Backlash, Undermine Protection Efforts
New York – Civilian deaths in Afghanistan from US and NATO airstrikes nearly tripled from 2006 to 2007, with recent deadly airstrikes exacerbating the problem and fuelling a public backlash, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. The report also condemns the Taliban's use of "human shields" in violation of the laws of war.

About 1,500 people marched through the streets of Denver, Colo., on Aug. 28, the final day of the four-day Democratic National Convention there, to press for immigrant justice. The march was organized by American Friends Service Committee and sponsored by local and national religious, human rights and labor organizations. Federico Peña, the former Denver mayor who co-chairs the presidential campaign of Democratic candidate Barack Obama, helped carry a banner stating: "Immigrant Rights Are Human Rights." (Notimex, Aug. 28; La Jornada, Mexico, Aug. 29 from AFP; Denver Post, Aug. 29)

On Aug. 31, more than 100 activists from a coalition of organizations concluded a four-day march along the route of a new border fence which the US federal government claims will help stop immigrants crossing from Mexico. The march opposing the fence construction began at Fort Hancock, Tex., some 55 miles southeast of El Paso, and ended with a rally in Sunland Park, New Mexico, just northwest of El Paso. Marchers took part in the action on both sides of the border fence. Border Patrol agents in vehicles and on horses kept watch over the border and scanned the march from a distance.