The president of Libya's National Transitional Council (NTC), Mustafa Abdel Jalil, denied Aug. 30 any presence of elements of the Polisario Front in the country, in response to a question at a Benghazi press conference about claims aired by Moroccan media that TNC forces have arrested some 556 members of the Western Sahara armed independence movement. The Sahrawi government and the Polisario Front last week said they denied categorically the charges made by the Morocco Board News Service Aug. 25 that Polisario fighters serving as mercenaries for Qaddafi had been detained in Libya. The joint statement called for an urgent independent inquiry into the allegations, and invited the new Libyan authorities to issue a denial. (Sahara Press Service, Aug. 31)

Clashes between police and Shi'ite protesters continue in Bahrain, fueled by the killing of a 14-year-old boy by riot police Aug. 31. The government of the Persian Gulf island state said it would "await a full investigation" by the Interior Ministry before drawing any conclusions about the death. Media reports said the youth was hit with a tear-gas canister in the oil hub area of Sitra. The new protests erupted on the first day of the Eid al-Fitr festival. The death of another protester, the first since early July, comes days after King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa said he would pardon some imprisoned protesters as "reconciliatory gestures" after a Saudi-backed crackdown began in March. Street fighting centers around districts near the Pearl Roundabout, the center of anti-government protests that began in February. Bahrain demolished the landmark Pearl Monument at the center of the plaza in March after it became a symbol of the protests. (CNN, Sept. 1; FT, AlJazeera, Aug. 31)

The Bolivian Supreme Court of Justice on Aug. 30 convicted seven officials—five military officers and two former cabinet ministers—of committing genocide. The military officials received sentences of 10–15 years while the former cabinet ministers received three-year sentences for complicity in the crime. The convicted leaders are not permitted an appeal. One commander of the army, Juan Veliz Herrera, pleaded innocence, and suggested he was being persecuted for having different political views than the current government. Trials for the genocide began in 2009, when the court began proceedings against former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada (in absentia) for the deaths of 63 protesters in the "Black October" incidents of 2003. He faces 30 years in prison if convicted. A further 17 former government officials face genocide charges related to "Black October."

Peru's new minister of energy and mines, Carlos Herrera Descalzi, said Aug. 31 that the Camisea consortium has been given two years to find new natural gas reserves to meet its export contracts, and that all gas from Lot 88, already under development in the rainforest of Cuzco region, would after that time be used to meet domestic demand. Herrera said the government was taking the move in response to "the just demand of the country." But he added: "All the contracts have been signed under the belief that there is more gas in Peru, that we were going to find more. What we are saying is that there is a two-year term to find more gas, a reasonable time frame for them to find more gas or to find another guarantee that isn't Block 88." President Ollanta Humala Tasso added after a meeting with leaders of the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP): "We have work to do on the issue of energy. We have failed to resolve the problem, and we want to do so in good faith, and without the necessity to resort to other methods." The previous administration of Alan García had started talks on changing the contract with the Camisea consortium, but those efforts stalled. (La Republica, Andina, Andina, Aug. 31)

A comparison that Danish and US researchers have made of the whole genomes of cholera bacteria found in patients in Haiti and in Nepal provides nearly conclusive evidence that Nepalese soldiers in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) were the inadvertent cause of a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 6,000 Haitians. The genomes are "practically identical," Harvard University microbiologist John Mekalanos told the magazine Science. "This is as close as you can come to molecular proof."

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.