Jose Ramos Horta, winner of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize, is a figure of towering moral authority, and will hopefully be able to restore both stability and real sovereignty to his nation. But it is painful to watch him take power as the East Timor he struggled to liberate from Indonesia is under de facto occupation by Australia and other foreign powers. From Austrialia's The Age, July 11:

Some 60,000 teachers were set to return to their classrooms on July 10 in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, after a seven-week strike that included numerous sit-ins at government buildings and an encampment in the central plaza in the city of Oaxaca. The teachers, members of Section 22 of the National Education Workers Union (SNTE), walked off the job on May 22 to demand cost-of-living adjustments and a larger education budget. On June 14 the strikers--who were also calling for the resignation of PRI governor Ulises Ruiz Ortiz and were supported by indigenous and other social movements in the state--beat back a violent attempt by state police to remove them from the plaza.

On June 23, US District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles ruled that Palestinian immigrant Aiad Khaled Barakat should be allowed to become a naturalized US citizen. Barakat is one of the so-called "LA 8": seven Palestinians and a Kenyan whom the government arrested in 1987 and sought to deport for alleged associations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). All eight have denied being PFLP members. The government initially tried to deport all eight of them, but in 1997 Barakat and another of the group were granted legal residency. Barakat's lawyers had appealed to the federal court after US immigration officials rejected his petition for citizenship last year; they claimed he lied in his citizenship interview about an association with PFLP leader Ali Kased.

In an 8-1 decision on June 22, the US Supreme Court ruled that immigrants who return to the US after being deported are "continuous lawbreakers" who lose the right to remain in the US, even after they marry US citizens. The ruling came in the case of Humberto Fernandez-Vargas, a 53-year-old Mexican citizen who entered the US illegally in the 1970s and was then deported several times. He had been in the US continuously since 1982 and had applied for permanent legal residency after marrying a US citizen in 2001. He was arrested and deported to Mexico two years ago; his wife, Rita, continued the legal battle on his behalf.

French hypocrisy exposed at last! It seems all the official pomposity and condescension about the barabric American torture state was merely for political show. We are shocked, shocked! From the New York Times, July 6:

PARIS, July 5 — A French terrorism trial was thrown into turmoil on Wednesday by a leaked report that French intelligence agents had secretly interviewed the six defendants during their detention by the United States at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

From the New York Times, July 6:

MILAN — Two officials with the Italian intelligence agency were arrested Wednesday in the kidnapping of a radical Egyptian cleric here in 2003. It was the first indication that Italian intelligence agents might have been directly involved in what prosecutors say was an American-led operation to detain and interrogate the imam.

More sacrifices for the American way of life. From Newsday, July 6:

Two killed in livery cab crash on Brooklyn-Queens Expressway

Two people were killed and another critically injured early Wednesday when a livery cab rear-ended a tractor trailer on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in Woodside and erupted in flames, police said.

The Times of India reported June 22:

SRINAGAR: Terrorists on Thursday tossed a grenade at the house of a holy man in Sopore, north Kashmir, killing two of his devotees and injuring 15, even as the saint escaped unhurt.

This was the second attack on the 'darvaish', Abdul Ahad, alias Ahad Bab, from the time militancy took root in the state. The ascetic lives a simple life and sits in an iron cage, clad in rags, while his devotees, who belong to different faiths, sit around him.