Iranian intelligence operatives detained over a dozen squirrels found within the nation's borders earlier this month, claiming they were serving as spies for Western powers determined to undermine the Islamic Republic. "In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran's borders," state news agency IRNA reported. "The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services." (YNet, July 17) Meanwhile in Iraq, British forces have denied rumors that they released a plague of ferocious man-eating badgers in the city of Basra. Several of the creatures, caught and killed by local farmers, have been identified by experts as honey badgers, which do not attack human beings unless threatened. UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." (BBC, July 12)

On July 10, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 25 current or former employees of the Swift & Company meat processing firm. Twenty of those arrested were sought on federal and state warrants; most were picked up on the job, while others were detained in their homes. ICE arrested 18 workers on criminal charges relating to identity theft and administrative immigration violations in six locations where Swift plants are located: Marshalltown, Iowa; Grand Island, Nebraska; Worthington, Minnesota; Greeley, Colorado; Hyrum, Utah; and Cactus, Texas. In Marshalltown, ICE also arrested Braulio Pereyra-Gabino, an official of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) who represents Swift employees, on criminal charges for "harboring illegal aliens"; and Christopher Todd Lamb, assistant director of human resources at the Marshalltown plant and a 17-year Swift employee, on a harboring charge as well as misprision of a felony. (ICE news release, July 11; DesMoines Register, July 13, 22; The Militant, Aug. 6)

Some 5,000 campesinos, students and activists marched in the eastern Salvadoran port city of La Union on July 15 to protest plans to build two electric plants near the Conchagua Volcano. The Virginia-based AES Corporation, which controls most of the electric power distribution in El Salvador, plans to build a coal-burning plant, while Houston-based Cutuco Energy Central America wants to build a plant using natural gas.

At least one million people—more than two million, according to some sources—marched in El Alto, Bolivia, on July 20 to call for national unity and to oppose proposals to move the executive and legislative branches of government from La Paz, the de facto capital, to the southern city of Sucre. Although no government officials spoke at the demonstration, in the evening President Evo Morales called the mobilization "historic"; analysts considered it the country's largest demonstration in recent years. The media nicknamed it the "Pacenazo" (from La Paz), while participants called it a cabildo (a public discussion, like a town hall meeting).

Global warming is drying up mountain lakes and wetlands in the Andes and threatening water supplies to such major cities as La Paz, Quito and Bogota, World Bank research reveals. The risk is especially great to the high-Andes wetlands known as páramo, which supplies 80 percent of the water to Bogota's 7 million people. Rising temperatures are causing clouds to condense at higher altitudes. Eventually this so-called "dew point" will miss the mountains altogether, said World Bank climate change specialist in Latin America, Walter Vergara. "We're already seeing a drying up of these mountain lakes and wetlands. We're seeing that the dew point is going up the mountain," he said of the World Bank-funded research at Colombia's Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies. (Reuters, July 20)

Boy, does it ever look like a case of "meet the new boss" in Ethiopia. A front-page story by Jeffrey Gettleman in the New York Times July 22 informs us that the government is blocking food aid to the restive Ogaden region. "Food cannot get in," said Mohammed Diab, the director of the UN World Food Program in Ethiopia. Another anonymous "humanitarian official" said: "It's a starve-out-the-population strategy. If something isn't done on the diplomatic front soon, we're going to have a government-caused famine on our hands." The government says the blockade covers only strategic locations, and is meant to prevent arms from reaching the Ogaden National Liberation Front. The really sick thing is that this is a tactic pioneered by the exiled dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, who has been convicted on genocide charges by the current regime. Back during the famines of the 1980s, Mengistu barred food aid from reaching the restive Tigray region (as the Library of Congress Country Studies page on Ethiopia recalls). Now the new (Tigray-dominated) regime is emulating this genocidal stratagem against its own ethnic enemies.

A three-judge panel of US Court of Appeals in Washington DC July 20 ordered the government to turn over virtually all its information on Guantanamo detainees who are challenging their detention, rejecting an effort by the Justice Department to limit disclosures. The ruling opens the way for scores of cases by detainees challenging the actions of Pentagon tribunals that decide whether terror suspects should be held as "enemy combatants." It is the latest in a series of legal challenges to the administration's detention policies that have increased the pressure on the White House to find an alternative to Guantanamo, where about 360 men are now being held.

A very amusing New York Times profile July 21 of Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the former firebrand cleric who is now exiled in Lebanon and barred from returning to his former home of Britain. The man who once praised the 9-11 plotters is now attempting to negotiate a truce in the fighting between the Lebanese army and Fatah al-Islam. He says: "I want to support Muslims by saving their blood and their life. My job is to calm the fighting and to open a dialogue." Counterintuitively, he says that it is moderate Muslims who are most at risk of becoming jihadist cannon fodder:

"How come the moderate Muslims, not Omar Bakri, do this?" he demanded. "Because of Sheik Google," he quipped, referring to the use of the Internet to learn Islamic principles.