Tens of thousands of protesters have filled the main squares of Spain's cities for the past week to protest government austerity measures—in defiance of a government ban imposed ahead of municipal and regional elections. Madrid's central square has been occupied for days by some 30,000 protesters, who have been dubbed "los indignados" (the indignant). Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero admitted he may not enforce the ban. "I have a great respect for the people protesting, which they are doing in a peaceful manner, and I understand it is driven by economic crisis and young people's hopes for employment," Zapatero said during a radio interview. (BBC News, May 21; Reuters, May 20)

The voluminous media commentary dedicated to President Barack Obama's May 19 speech on the Middle East has overwhelmingly focused on his extremely modest and reasonable demand that a peace settlement must be based on Israel's 1967 (that is to say, legal) borders—and the scandalized Israeli reaction. Nearly lost in all this noise is the first three-quarters of the speech, which speak to why the White House has for the first time in history embraced this minimal demand. The imperative to control the political trajectory of the Arab Spring—which is, as we have argued, what is really driving the Libya intervention—can be detected in every syllable of the transcript...

Thousands took to the streets in towns and cities across Syria for Friday protests May 20, and security forces again responded with tear gas and live ammunition, leaving at least 32 people dead. The killings were reported in the southern region of Deraa, the Damascus suburb of Daraya, the seaport of Latakia, the central city of Homs, and a village near the north-central town of Idlib (see map). Among the dead in Homs were two boys, aged 16 and 11. Protesters in many places shouted "azadi," which means freedom in Kurdish. Organizers had dubbed the 20th as Azadi Day, in solidarity with Kurdish protesters and to reflect the failure of policies aimed at getting Kurdish Syrians on the government's side with promises of recognizing their civil rights. (DPA, AlJazeera, May 20)

Extreme weather events—such as the heavy rains that have flooded towns along the Mississippi River and the tornadoes that ripped through an unprecendented 300-mile swath in Alabama—are extremely likely to occur more frequently in the future, according to climatologists. Urban planners and the insurance industry are among those that took part in a telephone press conference held May 19 by the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Climate change is about more than warming. What we're really seeing is global ‘weirding,'" said climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. "It is altering the character and conditions of the places we know and love. For many places around the world, what we are likely to see could be feast or famine—more frequency of weather at the extremes, from intense storms to prolonged droughts. We can't attribute any one event to climate change, but we do know that every event that happens is already superimposed on very different background conditions than we had 50 years ago."

Ethiopia's Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels issued a statement May 19 charging that the army has opened an offensive that is targetting civilians in the ethnically Somali region in the country's east (see map). ONLF spokesman Abdirahman Mahdi accused Ethiopian security forces of attacking villages near oil exploration sites in the Ogaden, which borders Somalia and has been the scene of a low-level insurgency since the early 1990s. "It is a random killing aimed at terrorizing the public," Mahdi said from his office in London. "This is the first time security forces turned up in villages, rounded up villagers and killed them in brutal manners." The statement called the attacks, centered around the towns of Nogob (Fik, by its official Ethiopian designation) and Jarar (Degahbur), a "pogrom," with at least 100 dead in recent days, and demanded an immediate UN investigation. Mohamed Gure, information minister for the Somali state government, called the claims "baseless propaganda." (AP, Ogaden Online, May 19)

Moammar Qaddafi's forces are carrying an offensive into Libya's western Nafusah Mountains that is not only targetting rebel training camps and supply routes that have been established there, but villages of the indigenous Amazigh (Berber) population. Local hospitals are reportedly overwhelmed, with casualties having to be loaded onto donkeys and smuggled past government blockades to get treatment elsewhere. Since the uprising began in February, some 50,000 Libyans have fled through the mountains to Tunisia, where a refugee camp has been established near the Dehiba border crossing. Berber refugees interviewed there by Human Rights Watch report that their homes in the villages of Nalut and Takut were shelled and livestock destroyed by Qaddafi's forces. Said one refugee from Nalut: "They were killing everything, the troops. They kept some [sheep] to eat, and they killed the rest. They shot them.... I saw the dead sheep." Grad missiles have targetted homes, mosques, water facilities, a school, and hospital compounds, refugees said. (AP, May 19; HRW, May 18)

A combined unit of the Guatemalan army and national police arrested a presumed leader of the Zetas narco-paramilitary network May 18, who authorities believe to be commander of the assassination squad that carried out this week's grisly massacre of 27 farmworkers at a ranch in the northern jungle department of Petén. The detained man is named as Hugo Álvaro Gómez Vásquez, who also goes by "Comandante Bruja" or simply "La Bruja" (The Witch, despite his gender). He was apprehended in Tactic, Alta Verapaz department, following a raid earlier that day on a Petén ranch known as La Mula, just 15 kilometers from Los Cocos ranch where the massacre took place. Authorities say a Zetas encampment was discovered at La Mula, in La Libertad municipality, along with clues on the whereabouts of Gómez Vásquez (see map).

At least 11 people were killed and more than 80 injured May18 as a protest demonstration sparked by a deadly US raid erupted into clashes with security forces in Taliqan, capital of Afghanistan's northeast Takhar province. Protesters armed with Kalashnikov rifles, axes, grenades and petrol bombs battled police, and assaulted a small NATO base on the city's outskirts, local officials and witnesses said. The protest was launched in reaction to the apparent killing of four civilians—including two women—in a night raid conducted by US troops on a nearby village. "American forces entered a house in a village near Taloqan city, the capital of Takhar province, around 12:30 AM. As a result, four people were killed," Abdul Jabar Taqwa, the provincial governor, told McClatchy news service in a telephone interview. An ISAF statement said: "A combined Afghan and coalition security force killed four insurgents, including two armed females during a security operation targeting an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan facilitator in Taloqan district, Takhar province yesterday."