After being detained for a day or two by Panamanian authorities on a request from Interpol, retired US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) station chief Robert Seldon Lady was released on July 19 and placed on a plane bound for the US. In 2009 an Italian court sentenced Lady in absentia to nine years in prison for the Feb. 17, 2003 kidnapping of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric and suspected terrorist also known as Abu Omar, on a street in Milan. Although 22 other US citizens were convicted in the kidnapping case, Italy has only been seeking Lady, who headed the CIA's Milan station; the others received lighter sentences that don't warrant extradition requests under Italian law.

Indigenous Mapuche occupied four oil wells in the Vaca Muerta region in the southwestern Argentine province of Neuquén on July 16 to protest a $1 billion agreement between the state-controlled Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales (YPF) oil company and the California-based Chevron Corporation to drill for oil in the area's shale deposits. (In an earlier item we wrote erroneously that the drilling was for natural gas.) The Mapuche say that the drilling, which uses the controversial method known as hydrofracking, will damage the local environment, and that the agreement was made without the required prior consultation with the indigenous communities. The protesters were also expressing solidarity with indigenous Ecuadorians who won a $19 billion judgment in 2011 against Chevron for environmental damage. The company refuses to pay.

On July 14 the three-member Appeals Court of Copiapó province in Chile's northern Atacama region unanimously upheld its April 10 order suspending work at Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation's Pascua Lama mine until the company has adopted measures to repair current damage to the environment and to prevent further damage in the future. The court found that in its responses to the previous order the company "repeatedly" displayed "an obstinate attitude" and that it "doesn't provide information on time and in proper form." Pascua Lama is an open-pit gold, silver and copper mine under construction in the Andes on both sides of the border between Argentina and Chile. Five indigenous Diaguita communities had filed a complaint against the mine, charging that the construction had damaged glaciers near the site that provide water for area residents. The mine is also subject to a May 24 suspension ordered by Chile's environmental regulator, Juan Carlos Monckeberg. (Associated Press, July 15, via Terra, Peru)

Tomás García Domínguez, an indigenous leader, was shot dead on July 15 in Intibucá department in western Honduras during a demonstration at the headquarters for the Agua Zarca hydroelectric project. Four other protesters were wounded, including García's son, 17-year-old Allan García Domínguez, who was hospitalized in serious condition with a bullet in his lung. According to Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) leader Berta Cáceres, the demonstration was peaceful, but "without saying one word the army opened fire against our companions, sending bullets into the bodies of Tomás García and his son, in the presence of police that remained paralyzed and did nothing to prevent it." A press release from the two companies constructing the dam—the Honduran company Desarrollos Energéticos S.A. (DESA) and the Chinese state enterprise SINOHYDRO—blamed the protesters and claimed the demonstration "included the destruction of installations, vehicles and personal property and direct aggression against the physical integrity of personnel."

More than 1,000 Haitian religious people, ranging from Protestants to Muslims, marched in Port-au-Prince on July 19 to oppose homosexuality and any law that might be proposed in Parliament to allow same-sex marriage. The marchers chanted slogans calling for the "survival" of the traditional family; one slogan threatened that "Parliament will burn if this bill is passed." At the site of the National Palace they paused to warn President Michel Martelly not to support homosexuality; when he was the popular singer "Sweet Micky," the president sometimes cross-dressed to play a female character he called "Ti Simone." The protesters also harassed Amélie Baron, the correspondent for the French network Radio France Internationale (RFI), apparently because France recently passed a law allowing same-sex marriage. Baron said she received an "anthology of insults": "You're sick, an abomination, the devil come here to corrupt Haiti." (AlterPresse, Haiti, July 19, July 19; Miami Herald, July 19, from AP)

At least 40 were killed in clashes that raged overnight after militants launched coordinated attacks on two Iraqi prisons July 22. The attacks on the prisons at Taji and Abu Ghraib, both outside Baghdad, included car bombs and mortar strikes on the front gates before gunmen assaulted the guards. At least 500 prisoners escaped.  (AFP, July 22)  A coordinated wave of seven car bombs tore through bustling streets July 20 in Shi'ite areas of Baghdad, leaving some 45 dead. (AP, July 20) On July 19, a bomb blast at a Sunni mosque during Friday prayers in the town of Wajihiya, Diyala, killed 20 people. Violence has killed at least 200 in Iraq since the start of Ramadan. (Rudaw, July 22; RFE/RL, July 19)

The on-again/off-again Parisian intifada has exploded again, this time over the arrest of a man whose wife was ticketed for wearing a face veil in the suburb of Trappes. Police say the man "tried to strangle" the officer doing the ticketing. The Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) published a statement on its website from the wife of the arrested man, accusing the police of being abusive and using unnecessary force. The incident was on the night of the 18th, and Muslim youth have been clashing with the police in Trappes since then. (Islamophobia Watch, July 21; AP, July 20)

An Israeli magistrate's court ruled July 21 to evict a Palestinian family from their home in East Jerusalem, after a six year legal battle to prove ownership of the property. The court ruled that the house is absentee property and ordered the Siam family to leave the premises by the end of July, Nathira Siam told Ma'an News Agency. The family was also ordered to pay 40,000 shekels ($11,200) as a rent supplement and 20,000 shekels ($5,600) to the court, Siam said. Nathira said that the family have lived in the property since the 1960s. "I've been renting the property from a woman called Sabriye Taha who has the rental contract and have been paying her regularly," she said. "When she passed away, Israel changed the ownership of the house to absentee property..."