On May 24, campesinos from Ejido Huizopa, Madera municipality, in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, launched a protest occupation of the Minera Dolores company's giant open-pit gold mine, which they say has been illegally established on their lands. The decision to launch the blockade was taken after two ejido leaders, Enrique Torres González and José Armando González, were arrested by Federal Preventative Police, later released without charge. The local company director Carlos García Droguett said the occupation places at risk a $200 million investment in the zone. (Excelsiór, May 29) Minera Dolores is owned by the Minefinders Corporation of Vancouver. (GeoMex.com)

A group of tribal elders sent by Libya has offered to serve as mediators in resolving the Tuareg rebellion in Niger. In a meeting with Niger's President Mamadou Tandja on Wednesday, the association of elders expressed its "will to contribute to peace" in the north of the country, a source told AFP.

Tuaregs flee MaliSeveral hundred civilians fleeing fighting between the army and Tuareg rebels in northern Mali have crossed the border into Burkina Faso since April. Over 300, mostly women and children, have been registered by the Burkina Faso National Commission for Refugees (CONAREF) in Ouagadougou, where they are being sheltered in locker rooms at the football stadium. A further 600 are setting up makeshift shelters in Djibo, some 50 kilometers from the Mali border. "The number of refugees arriving and claiming asylum is increasing," CONAREF official Kogda Der told the UN news agency IRIN.

Three people were killed and 20 injured when a bomb exploded May 28 at the offices of USAID-supported programs housed at the Philippine military's Edwin Andrews Air Base in Zamboanga, Mindanao. The dead included family members of Philippine military personnel waiting for a cargo flight to Manila, and children were among the injured. Edwin Andrews housed US Special Forces advisors before they were transfered to the Western Mindanao Philippine military command center, two kilometers away.

Israeli forces raided the village of Ni'lin, west of Ramallah, early May 29, storming houses and detaining four men. The mayor of Ni'lin, Aiman Nafe, said the incursion and detentions aimed to suppress activities scheduled for that day against construction of the separation wall through the southern lands of the village.

On May 19 the Cuban government accused Michael Parmly, outgoing head of the US Interests Section in Havana, of supplying opponents of the government with money from Cuban American right-winger Santiago Alvarez Fernandez-Magrinat, who is currently serving a 46-month prison sentence in the US for illegally stockpiling weapons.

On May 15 Chilean judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes Belmar found retired army colonel Mario Manriquez Bravo guilty in the Sept. 16, 1973 murder of the internationally renowned singer Victor Jara; the judge then closed the case, despite testimony that other officers were also involved. Joan Jara, the victim's widow, expressed surprise at the unexpected decision; the family's lawyer, Nelson Caucoto, indicated that he'll file an appeal so that other culprits can be identified. Caucoto noted that witnesses had referred to someone known as "The Prince" and identified him as the actual killer.

On May 21 Jose Leopoldo Gonzalez, secretary general of the Conference of Mexican Bishops (CEM), said the Catholic bishops had voted unanimously to call for the government to make former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) testify again about the killing of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and six people in a bloody shootout at Guadalajara's airport on May 24, 1993. Gonzalez said Salinas' previous testimony, on Aug. 2, 2006, was "full of omissions."