Dole Food Company, a California-based agricultural multinational, announced in Managua on Aug. 11 that it had arrived at a settlement with some 5,000 former banana workers who said their health had been damaged by prolonged and unprotected exposure to the pesticides Nemagon and Fumazone, brand names for dibromochloropropane (DBCP). The settlement, arranged with Dole by the Texas-based law firm Provost Umphrey, covers 3,153 Nicaraguans, 780 Costa Ricans and 1,000 Hondurans; the former employees or their survivors—about 300 of the workers have died--should start receiving payment in two or three months. The amount wasn't disclosed.

Tens of thousands of Chilean workers, students and teachers participated in a 48-hour strike on Aug. 24 and 25 initiated by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country's main labor federation, to call "for a different Chile." The demands included changes to the Labor Code, a reduction in taxes on fuel, and reform of the Constitution, created in 1980 during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The strike also backed the student protest movement that has paralyzed schools for three months to push for a reversal of the Pinochet-era privatization of education.

Honduran campesino leader Pedro Salgado and his wife, Reina Mejía, were murdered on the evening of Aug. 21 at their home in the La Concepción cooperative, in Tocoa municipality in the northern department of Colón. Salgado was the president of the cooperative and a vice president of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA), a leading organization in a decade-old struggle for land in Honduras' Lower Aguán Valley.

NATO warplanes have carried out repeated air raids on Moammar Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte over the past three days, as NTC forces advanced on his last major bastion of support. The strikes have hit supply convoys, bunkers and other targets of the Qaddafi-loyalist forces. NTC leaders charge that Qaddafi forces in the town and surrounding villages are using the populace as "human shields," refusing to let residents flee in advance of the impending battle, and even taking over their homes. (Oman Tribune, Aug. 29; The Guardian, Aug. 28; BBC Arabic service via Link TV, Aug. 26)

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos announced plans to strengthen enforcement efforts to protect oil companies operating in the southern Amazonian department of Caquetá Aug. 29. The move comes following a wave of guerilla attacks on oil operations in the area—apparently in retaliation for their failure to pay protection money. Santos called on the civilian population to report extortion by illegal armed groups in order to combat the practice in a more "energetic" way. (Colombia Reports, Aug. 29) In the most recent attack, on Aug. 18, a tanker truck of the firm Transamazonía, subcontracted by the UK-based Emerald Energy, was hit with gunfire by presumed FARC guerillas near an Vicente del Caguán. Companies operating in the zone had been making payments to the FARC for years, but suspended the practice after Santos warned that any company engaging in it would be banned form the country. (RCN Radio, Aug. 18; Radio Caracol, Colombia Reports, Aug. 5)

From ABC News, Aug. 29:

The same man who triumphantly led Libyan rebels into Gadhafi's compound last week first came to the attention of the U.S. intelligence community years ago—as a the founder of a terror group. Abdelhakim Belhaj, who was recently appointed to Tripoli's rebel military council, was one of the original founders of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an anti-Gadhafi group which was later designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organization with links to al Qaeda, according to U.S. government reports.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called for a federal investigation and Senate hearings into an Aug. 24 Associated Press report asserting that the CIA helped the New York Police Department (NYPD) in spying on the city's Musilm communities. CAIR said it suspects the intelligence gathering described in the report violates the US Constitution, and the US Privacy Act of 1974, which bars the CIA from domestic spying. The report claims undercover NYPD officers known as "rakers" were sent into Musilm neighborhoods to monitor bookstores and cafes, while informants known as "mosque crawlers" were used to monitor sermons.

Authorities in China's Sichuan province have charged three Tibetan monks with murder over the death of a fellow monk who set himself on fire in an apparent protest action. Two of the monks, Tsering Tenzin and Tenchum, are accused of plotting, instigating and assisting in the self-immolation of 16-year-old Rigzin Phuntsog on March 16. A third, Drongdru, is accused of moving and hiding the injured monk and preventing him from receiving emergency treatment for 11 hours, the official news agency Xinhua said. The trial will be held this week at the Maerkang County people's court. The Ngaba Kirti monastery, where the self-immolation occurred, has been under tight control by security forces ever since. In June, Beijing rejected pressure from the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) to provide information about more than 300 of Kirti's monks whose whereabouts remain unknown since a raid on the monastery in April. (AP, VOA, Aug. 26; Tibet Society, June 15)