Latin America

Tropical Storm Isaac is heading through the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to batter the Gulf Coast. Federal officials expect the storm to develop into a Category 1 hurricane and make landfall on Wednesday.

Set up for the Republican National Convention in Tampa, the “Romneyville” encampment is similar to Hoovervilles of the 1930s Great Depression. Residents of Romneyville are calling for an end to foreclosures, homelessness and the criminalization of poverty.

Welcome to this Week in Palestine, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for August 18th, to 24th 2012.

Six activists with the environmentalist group Greenpeace International have occupied a Russian oil rig to protest drilling in the Arctic. The rig belongs to the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom, which is set to become the first company to produce Arctic oil through drilling operations in the Pechora Sea.

Explosive new allegations have emerged that the man who gave the Black Panther Party some of its first firearms and weapons training was an undercover FBI informant in California. Richard Aoki, who died in 2009, was an early member of the Panthers and the only Asian American to have a formal position in the group.

While Karl Rove was almost indicted for the Plame affair, he has reinvented himself to become the most powerful political operative in America.

South African police shot dead 34 striking workers at a platinum mine last week, setting off a wave of protests. In what has been described as “South Africa’s first post-apartheid massacre,” the miners were killed after demanding more pay and walking off the job at the Marikana mine, the world’s third largest producer of platinum.

On Friday, three members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot were sentenced to two years in prison for staging a peaceful protest against Russian President Vladimir Putin inside an Orthodox church.

In his first public appearance since he took refuge two months ago inside Ecuador’s embassy in London, Julian Assange calls for President Obama to end his war on whistleblowers.