Latin America

U.S. peace activist Medea Benjamin was detained Monday at Cairo’s airport by Egyptian police without explanation. She says she was questioned, held overnight in an airport prison cell and then violently handcuffed by Egyptian officials, who dislocated her shoulder and broke her arm.

Though the Venezuelan economy began showing signs of crisis when Comandante Hugo Chavez was dying at the beginning of 2013, his successor Nicolas Maduro has attributed current difficulties to a supposed “economic war” being waged by unscrupulous business people, DPA reported.

Russia is vowing to keep its troops in the Ukrainian region of Crimea in what has become Moscow’s biggest confrontation with the West since the Cold War. Ukraine’s new prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, said Russian President Vladimir Putin had effectively declared war on his country.

Welcome to this Week in Palestine, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for February 22nd to the 28th, 2014. As the Palestinian leadership showed dissatisfaction with the US proposed peace plan this week, three Palestinian civilians were killed by the Israeli army.

In Mississippi, the city of Jackson is grieving today following the sudden death of Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, less than a year after he was elected. He suffered from heart failure on Tuesday. A longtime black nationalist organizer and attorney, Lumumba had been described as “America’s most revolutionary mayor.”