On May 28, some 200 Nicaraguan women marked International Day of Action for Women's Health with a protest in Managua to demand the decriminalization of therapeutic abortion. Dozens of vehicles formed a caravan that drove past the Supreme Court, the National Assembly, the offices of the main Nicaraguan media and the headquarters of the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), the party of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega Saavedra. The lead vehicle carried a poster of a pregnant woman being crucified, referring to the increase in the number of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth so far in 2007. The protest was organized by the Feminist Movement, the Nicaraguan Human Rights Center (CENIDH) and the Association of Gynecologists and Obstetricians, among others.

On June 1 a group of Mexican soldiers opened fire on an extended family riding in a van in Sinaloa de Leyva municipality, in the northwestern state of Sinaloa. According to the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), the soldiers fired when the driver of the van, Adan Abel Carrillo Esparza, failed to obey an order to halt at a roadblock. The barrage killed five family members: Griselda Galaviz Barraza, 25; Alicia Esparza Parra, 17; and Joniel, Griselda and Juana Esparza Galaviz, ages seven, four and two, respectively. The driver was wounded, along with Teresa Flores Carrillo Esparza, 16, and Jose Carrillo Esparza, five.

As of June 6 Mexican authorities had still not arrested four suspects in the May 15 murder of environmental activist Aldo Zamora, despite pressure from Greenpeace Mexico, human rights groups and federal legislators. Four assailants ambushed Zamora and his 16-year-old brother Misael Zamora around 6:30 pm as they were driving in Santa Lucia, Ocuilan municipality, in Mexico state, killing Aldo and wounding Misael. Misael was able to identify two of the killers as people who had been engaged in illegal woodcutting in the area.

Erick Sosa Villavicencio, a leader of the protest movement in Oaxaca, was freed at dawn on June 9 from the Federal Center of Social Readaption in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. The brother of Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, director of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), Erick was arrested last Nov. 28 and charged with "illegal deprivation of liberty." He was freed for lack of evidence. However, charges of violent robbery were not formally dropped, and he could still be detained again if authorities choose to reactivate the case against him. Insisting all the charges against him were "fabricated," Sosa said, "My only crime is being the brother of Flavio Sosa." His two brothers Flavio and Horacio remain at the Federal Center of Social Readaption in Altiplano, México state. (La Jornada, June 10)

Two Colombian soldiers assigned to counter-guerilla operations in the southern part of the country were arrested June 10 for slaying six unarmed civilians, including a child, during a killing spree early the previous day. The soldiers appeared to be drunk when they entered a party held in a school in the town of San Vicente del Caguan and opened fire, killing three, witnesses told reporters. Three more victims, including a nine-year-old boy, were found shot dead near the building, the army said in a statement. San Vicente del Caguan is the site of a former "demilitarized zone" ceded to the FARC guerillas as a condition of peace talks which have now broken down. (Reuters, June 10)

A suspected suicide blast in the middle of a Nairobi street June 11 has left at least one dead and dozens injured. The blast occurred during rush hour near the Ambassadeur Hotel in the city's packed central business district. It shattered shop windows and damaged a nearby bus. Kenyan anti-terrorism police are investigating the attack, with suspicions pointing to either Islamist Somali militants or the local Mungiki cult, which has been the subject of a crackdown in recent weeks. The blast took place blocks from where a bomb killed more than 200 at the US embassy in 1998. It appears to be Kenya's first terrorist attack since 15 were killed in a blast aat an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa in 2002. (Reuters, June 11)

The rights group Global Witness charges in a new report that cocoa profits fueled the brutal civil war in Ivory Coast just as diamonds did in Liberia, with both the government and rebels profiting from the trade. The study finds that 30% of the government's military costs during one six-month period were funded by cocoa proceeds, while rebels have reaped some $30 million per year from cocoa since 2004. Global Witness wants companies exporting cocoa to make public the origin of the beans. The industry is resistant. "Tracing or labelling individual beans is, as a practical matter, impossible," said Susan Smith, spokeswoman for the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, a trade group that includes Nestle and Hershey's.

A Sri Lankan probe into rights abuses blamed on both security forces and Tamil Tiger rebels fails to meet international standards, foreign observers say. Experts appointed by the international community to observe the presidential commission's investigation charge the most serious abuses saw "hardly any noticeable progress." Topping the list is the massacre of 17 local staff of Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger) in August 2006, called the worst attack on aid workers since the 2003 suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. In the days after the killings, Nordic truce monitors were prevented by security forces from reaching the site in the northeastern town of Muttur. They now say charge that security forces were behind the killings, which the government strenuously denies. The bodies have been exhumed and examined by forensic experts, but no arrests have been made. (Reuters, June 11)