New details are emerging surrounding the 208 arrests at the June 10 Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan. According to the New York Times June 13, the police still claim that people were arrested for "specific illegal behavior," like blocking traffic, and not because they were wearing colors of the Latin Kings gang. However, the Times found:

Two minarets at Shia Islam's revered Golden Mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra were blown up June 13. The government has imposed a total curfew on the city until further notice. Shi'ite officials blamed al-Qaeda for the attack, but Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, has called for restraint. "He condemns the attack and urges calm and not to do acts of reprisal against Sunnis," Sistani's spokesman, Hamed Khafaf, told Reuters.

Erick Sosa Villavicencio, a leader of the protest movement in Oaxaca, was freed at dawn on June 9 from the Federal Center of Social Readaption in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. The brother of Flavio Sosa Villavicencio, director of the Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca (APPO), Erick was arrested last Nov. 28 and charged with "illegal deprivation of liberty." He was freed for lack of evidence. However, charges of violent robbery were not formally dropped, and he could still be detained again if authorities choose to reactivate the case against him. Insisting all the charges against him were "fabricated," Sosa said, "My only crime is being the brother of Flavio Sosa." His two brothers Flavio and Horacio remain at the Federal Center of Social Readaption in Altiplano, México state. (La Jornada, June 10)

Two Colombian soldiers assigned to counter-guerilla operations in the southern part of the country were arrested June 10 for slaying six unarmed civilians, including a child, during a killing spree early the previous day. The soldiers appeared to be drunk when they entered a party held in a school in the town of San Vicente del Caguan and opened fire, killing three, witnesses told reporters. Three more victims, including a nine-year-old boy, were found shot dead near the building, the army said in a statement. San Vicente del Caguan is the site of a former "demilitarized zone" ceded to the FARC guerillas as a condition of peace talks which have now broken down. (Reuters, June 10)

A Sri Lankan probe into rights abuses blamed on both security forces and Tamil Tiger rebels fails to meet international standards, foreign observers say. Experts appointed by the international community to observe the presidential commission's investigation charge the most serious abuses saw "hardly any noticeable progress." Topping the list is the massacre of 17 local staff of Action Contre La Faim (Action Against Hunger) in August 2006, called the worst attack on aid workers since the 2003 suicide bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad. In the days after the killings, Nordic truce monitors were prevented by security forces from reaching the site in the northeastern town of Muttur. They now say charge that security forces were behind the killings, which the government strenuously denies. The bodies have been exhumed and examined by forensic experts, but no arrests have been made. (Reuters, June 11)

The Philippine military has deployed helicopters and spy drones with the help of US intelligence to search for Muslim rebels who kidnapped Italian Catholic priest Carlo Bossi of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) in the Zamboanga peninsula. Bossi was taken at gunpoint after saying Sunday mass in Payao town June 10. Bossi, 57, is the third Italian priest to be kidnapped in the area since 1998. The other two were released after some months and it was not clear if a ransom was paid. Philippine security forces said the kidnappers, led by a certain Commander Kiddie, were linked to either the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) or Abu Sayyaf. A MILF spokesperson said Khidi's real name is Abdusalam Akiddin and he is a loyal commander of imprisoned MNLF leader Nur Misuari. "He was once an MNLF member, but when the organization had a peace agreement with the government, this Akiddin formed his own group," said MILF spokesperson Eid Kabalu. (Asian Journal, June 10; Reuters, June 11; Sun Star Network, June 12)

From Reuters, June 10:

TEHRAN - Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who wants more aid from the United States, called on Sunday for a new world order to replace "capitalism and imperialism", at the start of a trip to arch U.S. foe Iran.

For those who remember when Albania was a hermetically sealed communist dictatorship under Enver Hoxha, the spectacle of George Bush receiving a hero's welcome in Tirana was a surreal one. An easy appeal to ethnic nationalism on the issue of Kosova was a sure way to win applause. "The question is whether or not there is going to be endless dialogue on a subject that we have made up our mind about," Bush said while visting Prime Minister Sali Berisha June 10. "We believe Kosovo ought to be independent. There just cannot be continued drift, because I'm worried about expectations not being met in Kosovo." But in a none-too-subtle equivocation on actual independence (and a warning against too strident demands for it), he called on Berisha to use his "good contacts" among Kosovar Albanians to help "maintain calm during these final stages." (EU Observer, June 11)