Peru's national government pledged to establish formal talks between Southern Copper and the regional government of Tacna region to resolve a dispute over scarce water resources. Authorities in Tacna say they want Southern Copper to stop using groundwater that it relies on to operate two of its copper mines, at Toquepala and Cajone. Tacna's president, Guillermo Chocano, said mines in the desert region should rely on desalinated seawater instead. The regional government has called for a halt to protests to give the government time to respond to its demand that approval of an environmental impact study on the planned expansion of operations at the Toquepala be suspended. But he and provincial mayors promised a strike to shut down the region next week if their demand is not met. "We are ready to open a working group on this," Prime Minister Salomon Lerner told reporters. "The strike won't go forward." He suggested the use of desalinated sea water rather than scarce groundwater for operations at the mines. (Reuters, Sept. 28; RPP, Sept. 27)

Police in Mexico's resort city of Acapulco found five decomposing human heads left in a sack outside a primary school in the Garita neighborhood on Sept. 26. Handwritten messages were also found, apparently threatening the state governor as well as local drug lords. Five decapitated bodies were earlier found elsewhere in the city. Some 100 schools in Acapulco have been closed since last month with teachers on strike in response to extortion threats from criminal gangs who demanded they hand over half their salaries from Oct. 1. Guerrero state Gov. Angel Aguirre has promised increased police patrols and the installation of security cameras and panic buttons at schools.

This one is really good. The poorly named 9-11 "Truthers" (perhaps more accurately rendered "Falsers") continue to moronically assert that al-Qaeda never claimed responsibility for the 9-11 attacks—despite the fact that it has done so time and time and time again. Now the terror network takes Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to task for spouting revisionist malarky that would steal the glory from Osama and his crew by blaming the attacks on the US government. David Goodman writes for the New York Times' The Lede blog Sept. 28:

The death toll from clashes following a soccer match in Western Sahara on Sept. 25 has reached seven, Morocco's MAP official news agency reports, making it the worst violence in the occupied territory since last November. Residents in Dakhla, the site of the match, told Reuters that clashes between ethnic Sahrawi supporters of the home team and Moroccan settlers who supported the visiting team from a town near Casablanca continued until early on Sept. 27. Street-fighting spread through the town as police used teargas, and army troops were ordered into two neighborhoods to restore order.

The sentencing of a Saudi Arabian woman to 10 lashes after she drove a car demonstrates the scale of discrimination against women in the kingdom, Amnesty International said Sept. 27. "Flogging is a cruel punishment in all circumstances but it beggars belief that the authorities in Saudi Arabia have imposed lashes on a woman apparently for merely driving a car," said Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director Philip Luther, noting the irony that the sentence was handed down days after the Saudi monarchy had announced that women would be granted the vote in municipal council elections.

Libyan leaders, including National Transitional Council (NTC) chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil, opened a three-day meeting in Benghazi Sept. 25 to begin a discussion regarding the formation of the country's interim government, which is to include a premier, vice premier and 22 ministers. As the NTC's troops continue to scour the country looking for ex-colonel Moammar Qaddafi, who has publicly announced his refusal to surrender, the transitional council continues to make progress within the international community. Last week, the new regime vowed to investigate allegations of human rights abuses after the World Bank recognized the NTC as the official government of Libya. The NTC was responding to an Amnesty International report asserting that both sides of the Libya conflict are responsible for human rights abuses, and warning the NTC to act quickly to investigate these claims. During a meeting in Paris earlier this month chaired by French President Nicholas Sarkozy, the NTC assured world leaders that Libya will be a society of tolerance and respect for the rule of law.

US counter-terrorism officials have indicated that the administration of President Barack Obama is considering trying the former leader of Hezbollah in a military commission on US soil, the Associated Press reported Sept. 26. According to anonymous officials, the Obama administration is considering the controversial move because they believe that the best place to try Ali Mussa Daqduq is a US military base. Daqduq was captured in Iraq in 2007, where he is currently being held. He is linked to a raid in Karbala, which killed four US soldiers, and is believed to have ties to Iran. If a US military tribunal hears the case, it will mark the first time a military commission has been held on US soil since 9-11. If no decision is made by the end of the year, Daqduq must be transferred to the custody of Iraqi officials according to a 2008 agreement between the US and Bagdad. Some have suggested that Daqduq be tried at Guantánamo Bay as an alternative to a trial in the US.

Managers at two factories in northern Honduras owned by the US clothing firm Delta Apparel, Inc. are continuing to threaten women employees suffering from work-related injuries, according to a Sept. 22 statement by the Honduran Women's Collective (CODEMUH). The group, which reported labor abuses at the plants in July, said injured workers had applied to the Labor and Social Security Secretariat (STSS) to have the company reassign them to other work. Management has responded by saying there are no other jobs available and these employees aren't competent at the work, CODEMUH reported. The two plants are Delta Apparel Honduras and Delta Apparel Cortés, maquiladoras (tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export) in Cortés department. (Adital, Brazil, Sept. 23)