A Shell Oil spokesman in Aberdeen, Scotland, assured that "everything" possible is being done to contain a massive oil spill from a North Sea pipeline. The leak began Aug. 10 on the pipeline system that serves the Gannet Alpha platform in British waters. But UK authorities say that Shell did not report the leak for two days, and by then more than 200 tons of oil had entered the sea. Said company spokesman Glen Cayley: "This is a significant spill in the context of annual amounts of oil spilled in the North Sea. We care about the environment and we regret that the spill happened. We have taken it very seriously and responded promptly to it." However, officials acknowledged that the pipeline is still believed to contain up to 660 tons of oil.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports Aug. 19 that BP has denied charges that oil is again leaking from the capped Macondo well that blew out last year, destroying the Deepwater Horizon platform and fouling large stretches of the Gulf of Mexico. Company spokesman Daren Beaudo refuted claims that BP has hired vessels to contain a new "oil sheen" near the site of last year's disaster. The reports fist emerged on the blog of New Orleans lawyer Stuart Smith, who asserted that BP had hired 40 boats to clean a new spill. It should be noted that BP's denial contained some equivocation. From the closing paragraphs of the Times-Picayune story:

The amount of radioactive material being emitted from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has fallen to one-fifth that of a month ago and one-10 millionth the levels in mid-March, the Japanese government and Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) said Aug. 17. Maximum radiation levels near the plant measured since the beginning of August were put at 200 million becquerels per hour—but Goshi Hosono, the cabinet minister in charge of the nuclear crisis, cautioned the 200 million becquerel reading is an estimate, and promised to seek ways of making precise measurements. TEPCO and the government said there is no major change in their timetable for bringing the plant under control. Containment efforts include building a wall of steel plates in front of the existing sea walls for units 1 through 4 to keep contaminated groundwater from entering the ocean. (ENS, Aug. 17)

US Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) is promoting a bill to suspend Washington's assistance to three elite Israel Defense Forces units, alleging they are involved in human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Leahy wants aid withheld from the Israeli navy's Shayetet 13 unit, the undercover Duvdevan unit and the Israel Air Force's Shaldag unit. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a long-time friend of Leahy, met with him in Washington two weeks ago to try to persuade him to withdraw the initiative. Leahy began promoting the legislation after protesters staged a rally outside office, demanding that he denounce the killing by Shayetet 13 commandos of nine Turkish activists who were part of the flotilla to Gaza in May 2011. Leahy, who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee's sub-committee on foreign operations, was the principle sponsor of a 1997 bill prohibiting the US from providing military assistance to foreign military units suspected of human rights abuses or war crimes.

From Amnesty International, Aug. 15:

The Egyptian authorities must immediately drop charges against a woman blogger and activist accused of defaming the military on Twitter, Amnesty International said today. Asmaa Mahfouz, 26, was summoned by military prosecutors on Sunday and later released on bail of 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($3,356) after posting messages on the social media network expressing concerns about the Egyptian justice system and the actions of the military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF).

On Aug. 7, nine former Salvadoran military officials accused in the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, including ex-defense minister Rafael Humberto Larios and air force Gen. Rafael Bustillo, were handed over to a criminal court in El Salvador after a Spanish court issued international arrest warrants. The Salvadoran government said in a statement that the men, among 20 ex-soldiers indicted by a Spanish judge in May, were in the custody of a civilian court that handles extradition cases. The suspects turned themselves in at a military installation, as Salvadoran police were preparing to arrest them on an extradition order from Interpol. A tenth suspect, former army chief of staff Rene Emilio Ponce, died in May, before the indictments were issued.

Students from the Faculty of Ethnology of the State University of Haiti (UEH) set up barricades at the nearby Champ de Mars, Port-au-Prince's main park, early in August to protest what they said was an increase in crime in the area. The protests started after an ethnology student, Philibert Sergo, was killed in a robbery in July. According to police inspector Dupont Joseph, 23 armed robberies were reported in the zone in June and July, although he said the number was declining.

US agents have been posted in recent weeks at a Mexican military base to carry out intelligence and planning work with Mexican officials against drug cartels, according to an Aug. 7 article by New York Times reporter Ginger Thompson. The team includes "fewer than two dozen” agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials and "retired military personnel members from the Pentagon's Northern Command," Thompson wrote. They are working at a "compound modeled after "fusion intelligence centers' that the United States operates in Iraq and Afghanistan to monitor insurgent groups." The US is also "considering plans to deploy private security contractors” in a counter-narcotics unit of the Mexican police, according to the article.