Shaker al-Abssi, leader of the al-Qaeda franchise Fatah al-Islam, was reported killed in the Lebanese Army's assault on a the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp Sept. 2. Lebanese officials said they were awaiting the result of a DNA test before officially issuing a statement. Some 35 members of the Islamist group were also reported killed in the assault. More than 300 people are believed to have died since the army's three-month siege on the refugee camp began. (RIA-Novosti, Sept. 3)

More than 670 people were arrested and some 50 people were injured in Santiago and other Chilean cities on Aug. 29 in massive protests against the economic policies of President Michelle Bachelet. The Unitary Workers Confederation (CUT), which organized the protest, charged that Bachelet was following economic policies inherited from the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte; the protesters also demanded the resignation of Finance Minister Andres Velasco. The police attacked marchers with tear gas and water cannons; the injured included two camera operators, National Literature prize-winning poet Raul Zurita and Senator Alejandro Navarro from Bachelet's own Socialist Party.

On July 28, thousands of people marched in Montevideo, Uruguay, to demand the repeal of Law 18.116, which modifies the penal code to impose prison sentences of between three months and three years on people who take part in the occupation of a property not their own. The march was called by the Uruguayan Federation of Housing Cooperatives for Mutual Aid (FUCVAM), together with the Union of Sugar Workers of Artigas (UTAA), the September 10, 1815 Movement of Tacuarembo and residents of the Las Laminas neighborhood of Bella Union in Artigas department.

Two members of Panama's militant Only Union of Construction and Similar Workers (SUNTRACS) were murdered on Aug. 14 and 15. Osvaldo Lorenzo was killed by a member of a company union when Lorenzo was protesting working conditions in the construction of a highway between Panama City and Colon. The Odebrecht company, Brazilian in origin, is running the project. Luigi Arguelles was shot at close range by a sergeant in the National Police in a tourist center in the Las Perlas Archipelago. The center's owner, a Colombian investor, had previously threatened the workers. According to Panamanian sociologist Marco A. Gandasegui, elements in the government of President Martin Torrijos are creating "ghost unions" and using them to destroy SUNTRACS. (Servicio Informativo "Alai-amlatina," Aug. 28). The union has had a leading role in protests against neoliberal economic policies. (See WNU, May 8, 2005)

On Aug. 30 thousands of workers marched in Mexico City from the Angel of Independence to the central plaza, the Zocalo, to protest what they called the "anti-union and anti-worker" policies of President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, of the center-right National Action Party (PAN). The organizers, the National Workers Union (UNT) and the Mexican Union Front (FSM), timed the march to precede Calderon's first state of the union report, to be delivered on Sept. 2. Police estimated the crowd at 20,000; organizers put attendance at 50,000. Despite several successful demonstrations, the UNT and FSM have repeatedly failed in their efforts to call a national strike against the government's plans for more privatization and other neoliberal economic policies.

In Chicontepec, Veracruz, members of the "Other Campaign in la Huasteca" activist network issued a statement Aug. 31 protesting the "disappearance" of three of the 10 Nahua campesinos detained at a June land occupation and since freed pending charges against them. All ten had gone to a local federal courthouse to check in and sign documents as a condition of their release, and three never returned. The others said they had been detained at the courthouse by elements of the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI), and are presumably being held at the federal prison at Tuxpan. However, authorities deny any record of their arrest. (La Jornada, Sept. 1)

On Aug. 27, the ACLU announced a settlement with ICE that improves conditions for immigrant children and their families inside the T. Don Hutto detention center in Taylor, Texas, a former medium security prison managed for ICE by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America. The case was to go to trial in Austin on Aug. 27. The settlement was approved on Aug. 30 by Judge Sam Sparks of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas in Austin. "Though we continue to believe that Hutto is an inappropriate place to house children, conditions have drastically improved in areas like education, recreation, medical care, and privacy," said Vanita Gupta, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program.

On Aug. 31, Judge Maxine M. Chesney of the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Social Security Administration (SSA) from sending "no-match" letters to companies whose employees' names do not match the Social Security numbers they used when they applied for their jobs. The letters were scheduled to be sent on Sept. 4 to about 140,000 employers with at least 10 workers whose names and Social Security numbers don't match. Chesney's order also prohibits the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from implementing a new rule, set to go into effect Sept. 14, under which the affected companies would have to resolve any discrepancies within 90 days or face sanctions, including fines.