The Nigerian government freed militant leader Henry Okah July 13, meeting a demand by Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), who have been attacking the country's oil installations and kidnapping oil workers. The insurgents have said that his release would not lead them to end their attacks. On July 12, rebels set fire to an oil depot and loading tankers in Lagos, killing five—MEND's first attack outside the Delta region. (AP, July 13)

A police officer who was reported missing July 12 was found dead the next day near a mine operated in West Papua by the US conglomerate Freeport. The death followed fatal ambushes over the weekend of a security guard and an Australian mining expert working for Freeport in the same area. Indonesian authorities blamed Papuan separatists. (NYT, July 13)

Two Uighur men were shot dead and a third wounded after an apparent attack on police in Urumqi, Xinjiang, July 13. The next day, authorities raised the death toll in the recent Urumqi violence to 192 people and 810 injured. The rise in the toll had been expected as authorities earlier said many of the critically injured were near death. The previously announced death toll was 184, of whom more than 130 were Han Chinese. Uighurs say up to hundreds of their dead are not being counted. (UPI, July 15; BBC World Service, July 14; The Telegraph, July 13)

Iran executed 13 members of the Sunni militant group Jundallah in Zahedan, Sistan-Baluchistan province, July 14. Jundallah, which reportedly has up to 1,000 armed fighters, claims to fight against the Shi'ite regime's marginalization of Iran's 2 million ethnic Baluchis, who are mostly Sunni. Tehran blames the group for attacks including a mosque bombing in May that killed 25. Amnesty International had appealed for a stay of execution. (AFP, BBC News, July 14)

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.