On July 15 at 5 PM, 50 agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and 12 detectives from the Rhode Island state police simultaneously raided all six of the state's courthouses, arresting 31 immigrants employed as maintenance workers by two contractors hired by the state. Those arrested were 16 women and 15 men, immigrants from Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil and Mexico. (Providence Journal, July 17)

From Human Rights Watch, July 21, via Congo Planet:

Congo Peace Accord Fails to End Killing of Civilians
Brussels — The killing and rape of civilians in the eastern province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues at a horrifying rate despite the signing of a peace accord six months ago, Human Rights Watch said today. The agreement was supposed to stop such attacks.

New York's Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) protests that detainees are being deported to countries that practice torture. On July 2, two Algerians were transferred from Guantánamo to the custody of the Algerian government—the first Algerians transferred from Guantánamo to Algeria. Since then, the men have effectively "disappeared," CCR says.

Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who has admitted to being Osama bin Laden's chauffeur in Afghanistan, went on trial at Guantánamo Bay July 21, in the first US war crimes trial since World War II. Hamdan pleaded not guilty to the charges before the military tribunal which could send him to life in prison. (Reuters, July 22) But in a surprise move, the presiding judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, excluded as inadmissible all statements obtained from Hamdan's interrogations in Afghanistan, except his first videotaped battlefield interrogation—in which he disclosed no links to bin Laden. "The interests of justice are not served by admitting these statements because of the highly coercive environment and conditions under which they were made," Allred wrote in a 16-page ruling. (McClatchy, July 22)

Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was detained July 21 in Serbia, government sources in Belgrade report. He has been wanted by international authorities since 1996 on genocide charges. A statement by Serbia's National Security Council, headed by President Boris Tadic, said Karadzic was arrested and handed over to the Belgrade-based Special War Crimes Court. The statement did not offer further details.

On the morning of July 17, after 16 hours of debate, Argentina's Senate rejected a law proposed by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to raise the tax on soy exports from 34% to 44%. The Chamber of Deputies had approved the bill earlier. The measure would have made into law a tax hike that Fernandez put into effect previously by decree. The Senate was tied over the bill until Vice President Julio Cobos, who is connected to agricultural interests, ended the impasse by voting against his own government. It was "the most difficult day of my life," he said. A number of senators from Fernandez's Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) also voted against the bill.

In mid-July Citgo—the US oil distributor owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA)—began a program to distribute compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to low- and middle-income families in Houston and Corpus Christi, Tex.; Lamont, Ill.; Lake Charles, La.; and Washington, DC. Ultimately the program is intended to supply some 460,000 of the energy-saving lightbulbs to homes in these cities and in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva arrived in Bogotá on July 18 for a three-day visit to Colombia that included joining Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in the inauguration of a meeting of business leaders from the two countries. On July 19 Lula and Uribe met in the Hatogrande estate on the outskirts of the capital to sign accords on investment, the environment and biofuels, and on security along the 1,500-km border Brazil and Colombia share in the Amazon region.