Latin America

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.

Ecuador received the unanimous support of the ALBA countries in its decision to grant asylum to Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, reported TeleSur from Guayaquil.

Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower in the United States, praises Ecuador for granting political asylum to Julian Assange to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sex crime accusations.

Britain is refusing to give Julian Assange of WikiLeaks safe passage out of the country even though Ecuador has granted him political asylum. On Thursday, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Assange would be arrested if he left the embassy.