Nearly a week after dozens of inmates walked out of a prison in Zacatecas, the central Mexican state's top security official, Public Security Secretary Alejandro Rojas Chalico, resigned May 22. Authorities are still trying to track down the 53 prisoners who left Cieneguillas prison in the city of Zacatecas May 16 with the help of 20 men as prison guards stood by. (CNN, May 22)

Some 1,500 Muslims took to the streets of Athens on May 21 in a protest prompted by reports that a police officer tore up a copy of the Koran while checking the identity papers of four Syrian (or, by some accounts, Iraqi) immigrants. Marchers chanted "Allah is great" and carried banners reading "Hands off immigrants." Police used tear gas to disperse the crowd when violence broke out. Most of the protesters were from Pakistan or Afghanistan. Immigrants from Asia try to enter Greece daily. Last year Greek authorities arrested some 150,000 for entering the country illegally. (AlJazeera, Radio Netherlands, May 22)

It made the New York Times May 21, when Israeli security forces "dismantled" a small Jewish outpost in the West Bank—in what was seen as a gesture by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to President Obama three days after their meeting in Washington. No arrests were made at the "illegal" outpost—Maoz Esther, is in the Ramallah region—where at least four families lived in a couple of concrete structures and several temporary shacks. Hours after security forces withdrew, residents set about rebuilding the demolished structures. Israel's YNet quotes settlers who vowed to make the outpost larger. MK Michael Ben Ari (National Union) also arrived at the scene and nailed a mezuzah to the wooden structure being raised by the settlers, stating: "It's my duty as a legislator."

Former vice president Dick Cheney on May 21 defended the national security policies of the Bush administration. Speaking at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Cheney criticized many of the security policies of President Barack Obama and described how the 9-11 attacks affected subsequent decisions. Maintaining that accurate intelligence is necessary to any strategy, Cheney defended the use of force to obtain timely information as being granted by Article II of the US Constitution and the Sept. 18, 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Four men in Newburgh, NY, are arrested by federal agents in a supposed plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at Stewart International Airport with Stinger missiles. The men are apparently all Black converts to Islam; one is a Haitian immigrant; most have drug convictions and converted in prison. (NYT, May 21) The (disabled) Stinger missile, of course, originated with the FBI infiltrator. We wonder how much more of the plot originated with the FBI infiltrator.

Former US soldier Steven Green was sentenced May 21 to life in prison for the rape and murder of an Iraqi teenage girl and the murder of her family in Mahmudiya. A federal jury in the US District Court for the Western District of Kentucky, which convicted Green earlier this month, was instructed to decide "whether justice requires imposition of the death penalty or life imprisonment without any possibility of release."

Spanish National Court Judge Santiago Pedraz Gómez reinstated charges May 21 against three US soldiers for their involvement in the death of Spanish cameraman José Couso, which occurred when the soldiers opened fire on a Baghdad hotel frequented by Western journalists in 2003, allegedly without provocation.

Authorities in Burma on May 21 closed the trial of pro-democracy advocate and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after briefly opening it to 30 foreign diplomats the previous day. UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said he plans to visit Burma "as soon as possible" to urge the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. In an interview with CNN, Ban said that he was "deeply concerned" about the detention of "an indispensable patron for reconsidering the dialogue in Myanmar."