International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said July 7 that he has filed an appeal to have Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir charged with genocide in the Darfur conflict. In March, the court indicted Bashir on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity—including murder, rape and torture—but ruled that it had insufficient grounds for a charge of genocide. Bashir has dismissed the allegations as part of a Western conspiracy.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced July 7 that Costa Rican President Oscar Arias will serve as international mediator in the Honduran crisis. Clinton made the announcement at the State Department after meeting privately with ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya. She said Zelaya as well as the Honduras' de facto president, Roberto Micheletti, agreed to recognize Arias as mediator. Clinton also said she had spoken to Arias that day, and noted that he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987 for helping broker an end to Central America's civil wars. "He is the natural person to assume this role," she told reporters.

Peru's government ordered more than 32,000 police and over 6,000 soldiers to keep order around the country as a paro or series of coordinated strikes against the free-trade policies of President Alan García entered its second day July 8. The education and transportation sectors are those most affected. The Unitary Syndicate of Peruvian Education Workers (SUTEP) claimed 80% teacher participation in the strike in Lima and 100% in the provinces, while the General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP) claimed widespread compliance with a transportation strike in the capital. Rallies were held in several locations around Lima, the largest being the Plaza Dos de Mayo. With bus lines halted, taxis and combis raised their prices.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) on July 6 blew up a Chevron platform in Okan that accounts for 80% of the company's offshore operations Nigeria's south. A MEND statement said the attack was carried out by the militant group's "Hurricane Moses" team "in retaliation" for the "abduction of a traditional chief" by Nigeria's Joint Task Force. MEND spokesman Jomo Gbomo said, "as long as the government and the JTF choose to carry out kidnappings and arson against innocent communities and individuals, Moses will fight for them."

Father José Andrés Tamayo, an activist Honduran priest who was the Central American recipient of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for 2005, went into hiding shortly after the June 28 military coup that removed President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from power, according to phone calls he made on July 1 to New York's Spanish-language daily El Diario-La Prensa and the US-based Catholic News Service.

Thousands of riders were stranded in Lima early on June 30 at the beginning of a 24-hour national strike by Peruvian urban transportation workers and owners. The strikers were protesting new regulations that were to take effect on July 1 and a new rate for fines that starts on July 21. In the southern Lima neighborhood of Villa El Salvador, a group of strikers hurled rocks at buses not honoring the strike call; police agents responded by shooting in the air, according to Radio Programas del Perú (RPP). In the north of the city some strikers stoned buses and burned tires; others used rocks to block the Carretera Central, which links Lima to the center of the country.

During the week of June 29 Haitian president René Préval and pro-business groups pushed hard to water down a bill Parliament passed in May to raise the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). Claiming that the wage increase would jeopardize the free trade zone (FTZ) factories—maquiladoras that assemble goods largely for export—Préval has proposed an increase to 125 gourdes for that sector. On June 29 Préval met with journalists to explain his position. Jobs in the FTZ sector have grown from 8,000 in 2007 to 25,000 now, he said, and those jobs would be put at risk by a large wage increase. (AlterPresse, June 29)

Despite harsh restrictions on media and Internet in the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, wire services report continuing clashes between Han and Uighur residents of Urumqi in the wake of violence July 5 that left some 150 dead. Riot police used tear gas to disperse mobs armed with pipes and sticks. Han youth chanting "defend the country" attempted to invade Uighur neighborhoods, seeking retribution for the previous day's violence. In Hong Kong, Human Rights Watch Asia researcher Phelim Kine said the Chinese government needs to bring in an "international investigator from the United Nations to try to determine what exactly happened on Sunday and what were the reasons for it." (NY Daily News, BBC News, VOA, July 7)