South Sudan is witnessing a sharp rise in armed conflict—with less than three months to go before the formal independence of the fledgling nation. Heavy fighting has killed some 1,000 and displaced an estimated 100,000 since southerners voted overwhelmingly for independence in January, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The fighting is centered in Unity and Jonglei states, near the border with the North (see map). The most recent clashes have pitted the southern armed forces of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) against a breakaway SPLA faction led by Peter Gadet, who has taken up arms against the South Sudan government. (Reuters, May 11; IRIN, April 26)

Thousands of Egyptians filled Cairo’s Tahrir Square for a Friday rally May 13 calling for national unity after attacks on Coptic churches, and for solidarity with the Palestinians. Protesters held Egyptian and Palestinian flags, and placards reading in Arabic "No to secterian strife." The "Unity Rally" was called following clashes between Muslims and Christians that left 13 people dead after a church was attacked in Cairo's Imbaba district earlier this week. "If you attack a Christian, you're attacking all Egyptians," said one activist delivering a speech at the podium. "The churches attacked in Imbaba are not less than the mosques attacked in Jerusalem," he said, linking the two themes of the rally. Authorities have arrested 23 presumed Salafist militants in the church attack. (Daily Star, Lebanon, DPA, May 13; al-Masry al-Youm, May 12; BBC News, May 10)

Two suicide explosions targeted a paramilitary Frontier Constabulary training center in Charsadda district of Pakistan's Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province (the former North West Frontier Province) May 13, killing up to 90 recruits as they lined up to be bussed home on leave. Over 140 others sustained critical injuries. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility, calling it response to the killing of Osama bin Laden. "This was the first revenge for Osama's martyrdom," Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said by telephone from an undisclosed location. "Wait for bigger attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan." (Pakistan Observer, Pakistan Times, May 13)

Lobsang Sangay, the newly elected prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, met May 12 with three Tibetan activists on indefinite hunger strike in New Delhi to protest against a Chinese crackdown at the Kirti monastery in Sichuan province. The activists are members of the Tibetan Youth Congress, which says the aim of the hunger strike—now in its 18th day—is to press for the immediate withdrawal of Chinese security forces from the monastery and the unconditional release of all Tibetan political prisoners, including those recently arrested in Sichuan's Ngaba county. They are also demanding that a TYC delegation be granted access to Tibet to assess the situation of political prisoners there. Sangay, who is due to take office in August, was a leading member of the TYC during his college years in New Delhi.

Argentine federal authorities on May 12 arrested three pilots—two still working for Aerolíneas Argentinas, the other retired from the navy—along with an attorney and a retired naval official, who are accused of having participated in "death flights" during the military dictatorship's "dirty war" against leftist dissidents in the 1970s. In this secret program, "disappeared" dissidents were taken from the notorious secret prison at the Navy Mechanics School (ESMA) and dropped from the air alive into the sea. Among the prisoners believed to have been killed in this manner are the founder of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Azucena Villaflor de de Vincenti, and her comrades Esther Ballestrino de Careaga, María Ponce de Bianco, Angela Aguad and the French nun Leonie Duquet, who were abducted in early December 1976. Their bodies were found washed up on a beach at Santa Teresita days later. In 2005 the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team identified the bodies and certified the cause of death. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo group was established to demand the reappearance alive of "disappeared" dissidents. (La Nacion, Buenos Aires, May 13)

A complex multi-dam hydroelectric scheme that environmentalists say threatens a pristine area of fjords and valleys in Chile's remote Patagonia country was approved May 9 by an 11-to-1 vote of the Aysén Environmental Review Commission, a body appointed by the central government to oversee the project, after a three-year assessment. The 2,750-megawatt HidroAysén project includes five dams—three on the Río Pascua, and two on the Río Baker, Chile's largest river by volume of water. The dams would flood at least 5,700 hectares (22 square miles) of forest and farmlands in southern Chile's Aysén region, including part of Laguna San Rafael National Park.

Two oil line ruptures in as many weeks may jeopardize a planned Alberta-to-Texas tar-sands pipeline that Calgary-based TransCanada is currently seeking approval for. The 1,702-mile, $12 billion Keystone XL line could get the go-ahead from the US State Department by year's end. But on May 7, a valve broke at a pumping station near near Cogswell, North Dakota, along the first leg of the Keystone pipeline system. The breach released some 500 barrels of Canadian heavy crude inside the facility and set off a geyser of oil that reached above the treetops in a nearby field. Just ten months ago the pipeline began transporting bitumen from Alberta's oil sands mines to refineries in Patoka, Illinois. A recent study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups said that because tar-sands pipelines carry a highly corrosive and acidic mix of diluted bitumen and volatile natural gas liquid condensate, they raise the risk of spills. The study found that internal corrosion has caused more than 16 times as many spills in the Alberta pipeline system than the US system because of bitumen.

The US on May 11 approved a Royal Dutch Shell plan to drill for oil in five locations deep under the Gulf of Mexico. The proposal, for drilling in the so-called Appomattox discovery, was the second exploration plan submitted by Shell to win approval from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) since the agency introduced stricter criteria for new drilling following last year’s Macondo disaster. The company’s Cardamom discovery in the Garden Banks area of the Gulf was approved in March. At least six other deep-water plans are now pending for the Gulf. Companies apply for permits to actually exploit oil after receiving approval for an exploration plan. The government lifted a moratorium on deep-water Gulf drilling in October. Shell runs the Appomattox venture and holds an 80% stake, with Nexen Inc. holding the remaining 20%. (WSJ, Upstream Online, May 11)