- After being assailed by agribusiness-backed lobbyists and a grossly dishonest propaganda campaign, proposed Department of Labor regulations banning children from dangerous agricultural work have been withdrawn.
- NACLA examines the indigenous community of Cherán in Mexico, where residents protecting forests from illegal logging face deadly assaults from paramilitary groups.
- In a related story, an anti-logging activist in Cambodia was “shot dead by police in a remote south-western province while guiding journalists to the scene of illegal logging.”
- The Inter Press Service details massive land grabs that have taken place in the developing world by foreign investors and another article describes the complicity of the World Bank. According to one study cited, “between 2000 and 2010 some 203 million hectares were leased or sold in developing countries.”
- Freelance journalist Ben White describes the discrimination Christian Palestinians face from Israeli occupation. He mentions the fact that 35 per cent of all Christians in pre-1948 Mandate Palestine were ethnically cleansed during the Nakba.
- Yuval Diskin, the ex-head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, accused the Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister of making decisions based on “messianic feelings” and of “misleading the public” about the ease with which Iran’s nuclear program could be disabled by an Israeli strike.
- An investigative piece in the Village Voice asserts that NYC uses unreasonably high bail and the threat of jail to extort guilty pleas from defendants accused of minor offenses.
- The Wall Street Journal reports that the Obama administration has given the CIA and the Pentagon “greater leeway to target suspected al Qaeda militants in Yemen with drones.”
- The UN special rapporteur on indigenous peoples is set to investigate the living conditions of Native Americans in the US for the first time.
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