A United Nations team, including representatives from the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the World Health Organization (WHO), completed a one-week mission to Tripoli on July 24. On the fourth mission to Tripoli since the beginning of the crisis, the team aimed to assess the needs of displaced persons and other vulnerable groups, and looked at the humanitarian impact of the conflict on civilians. "Although the mission observed aspects of normalcy in Tripoli, members identified pockets of vulnerability where people need urgent humanitarian assistance," said Humanitarian Coordinator Laurence Hart.

The Syrian government on July 24 approved a draft law that would allow the formation of political parties to oppose the ruling Baath Party, led by President Bashar al-Assad. The law would permit a political party to be established so long as it is not based on religious or tribal lines and does not discriminate based on ethnicity, gender or race. Though the draft law, along with other concessions made by al-Assad, is a step toward the reform demanded, protestors seek an end to Article 8 of the Syrian Constitution, which declares the Baath Party leader of the state and society. The bill will likely be presented for debate on Aug. 7, and Parliament must approve the law before it is enacted.

An independent commission on July 24 began investigating human rights violations related to the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Bahrain. The chairman of the five-person Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), Cherif Bassiouni, announced that the group's investigation would focus on 30 police officers alleged to have committed violations of procedural laws, as well as the country's army. Bahraini authorities have promised that the commission will have access to government files and will be permitted to interview witnesses without supervision. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) announced in June that Bahrain had agreed to permit a UN commission to investigate human rights violations related to protests shortly after King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa agreed to the investigation. Thirty-three people died during the unrest and more than 400 were injured. The commission is scheduled to publish the results of the investigation by Oct. 30.

All 44 teachers at the public high school in Las Delicias, a village in Tierralta municipality in the northern Colombian department of Córdoba, sought refuge in Montería, the department's capital, on July 22 after being threatened by a paramilitary group. According to Domingo Ayala Espitia, president of the Córdoba Teachers Association (Ademacor), the paramilitaries sent the teachers text messages demanding 15 million pesos (about $8,535). More than 1,100 students attended the abandoned school.

After 24 hours of negotiations, the Costa Rican government and all the unions representing medical workers for the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS) signed an agreement on July 23 ending a strike that the unions had started four days earlier over economic issues. This was the first major strike to confront President Laura Chinchilla since she took office in May 2010. As in a number of Latin American countries, social security includes medical care in Costa Rica, and the CCSS employs some 48,000 medical workers at 29 hospitals.

Two US Congress members, Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AR) and Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), are seeking signatures from their colleagues on a letter to US president Barack Obama about a proposed natural gas pipeline in Puerto Rico. "At a time when we should be promoting renewable, clean energy throughout the country, a 92-mile pipeline—nearly as long as the entire island—is a step in the wrong direction," the representatives wrote in the letter, which has been endorsed by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). The project ("Gasoducto" in Spanish) shouldn't proceed without an environmental impact statement conducted by the US Corps of Engineers, according to Grijalva and Gutiérrez. (El Nuevo Día, Guaynabo, July 12)

In a report published on July 19, the Argentine branch of the environmental group Greenpeace charged that operations by the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation in the Andes at the border with Chile had already significantly damaged three small glaciers. Citing a 2005 technical study, Greenpeace said the surface of the Toro 1, Toro 2 and Esperanza glaciers "diminished by between about 56% and 70% because of the activities carried out by Barrick" even before mining operations had begun. The regions on either side of the border are arid, and farmers in the valleys largely depend on Andean glaciers as a source of water.

Media reports have noted that accused Oslo bomber Anders Behring Breivik indicated through his online spewings that he is a fan of professional Islamophobe Pam Geller, who led the protests against New York's "Ground Zero Mosque" last Sept. 11. At the time, we noted the irony that the same pseudo-left hucksters (especially Workers World Party and its satellites) that organized the counter-protest against Geller's thugs ironically shared in demonization of the Muslims of Bosnia and Kosova with such right-wing mosque-opponents as Terry Jones and Glenn Beck. Now, as paranoid pseudo-left hucksters line up to charge (on no evidence) that Breivik is a Mossad agent, it emerges that he was actually motivated by... rage at NATO's bombardment of the Serbs! This from AP, July 25: