Royal Dutch Shell has shut down a tenth of Nigeria's oil production, after armed militants kidnapped four foreign oil workers and blew up a major pipeline Jan. 11. The incidents followed attacks on pipelines owned by the Nigerian state-owned oil company in December, disrupting supplies from the world's eighth-largest oil exporter for several days.

New York's Jewish weekly The Forward weighs in on the recent imbroglio over supposed anti-Semitic comments by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

Venezuela's Jews Defend Leftist President in Flap Over Remarks
By MARC PERELMAN
January 13, 2006

The Venezuelan Jewish community leadership and several major American Jewish groups are accusing the Simon Wiesenthal Center of rushing to judgment by charging Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chavez, with making antisemitic remarks.

Officials of the leading organization of Venezuelan Jewry were preparing a letter this week to the center, complaining that it had misinterpreted Chavez's words and had failed to consult with them before attacking the Venezuelan president.

"You have interfered in the political status, in the security, and in the well-being of our community. You have acted on your own, without consulting us, on issues that you don't know or understand," states a draft of the letter obtained by the Forward. Copies of the letter are also to be sent to the heads of the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, among other Jewish groups.

From Reuters, Jan. 10:

U.S. soldiers fed up with almost daily bomb attacks on their patrols near Iraq's main oil refinery are taking drastic measures to fight their shadowy enemy -- they're walling in an entire town.

Army bulldozers have begun building giant sand embankments around Siniya, a town of 50,000 close to the northern oil refining city of Baiji. When finished it will be 10 km (6 miles) long and more than 2 meters (nearly 8 feet) high.

From DPA, Jan. 9, via United Arab Emirates' Khaleej Times:

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Monday said it has launched a strong protest with the Afghan-based Coalition Forces over weekend firing from across the border that killed eight people in the country's North Waziristan tribal region.

"We have protested with the Coalition Forces as they are responsible for security on the other side of the (Pakistan-Afghan) border," Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam told reporters in Islamabad.

From Newsday, Jan. 9:

[A] French engineer abducted Dec. 5 apparently was dumped on a Baghdad street by his fleeing captors and recovered by U.S. troops, who turned him turned over to the French Embassy on Sunday, according to Iraqi police and the French Foreign Ministry in Paris. Bernard Planche, 52, was kidnapped on his way to work at a water plant. Planche worked for a non-governmental organization called AACCESS and was found Saturday night near a checkpoint in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood. His captors had demanded the withdrawal from Iraq of French troops—even though the country has none in Iraq.

Zapatista leaders and family members held a small, private funeral for Comandante Ramona somewhere in the territory of the mountain hamlet of Oventic Jan. 7. The exact location was not revealed. (El Universal, Jan. 7) In a Jan. 9 communique, the Zapatista General Command issued a revised schedule for their national tour:

Talli Nauman writes for Mexico's El Universal, Jan. 7 via Chiapas95:

Representatives of the first peoples of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States have issued a joint communique' they hope will set the new year's agenda for protection of the environment they have shared since long before a national border separated them.

Negotiators for 26 Mexican indigenous communities and U.S. tribes who felt their concerns were sidelined in a 2005 binational declaration on border environment, released their own statement in response.

On Jan. 6, just as the Zapatista national tour (dubbed the "Other Campaign" in reference to the presidential campaigns now underway in Mexico) had reached the town of Tonala, in the Pacific coastal zone of Chiapas state, word arrived that Comandante Ramona, a highly respected member of the Zapatista Army's General Command, had finally succumbed to kidney cancer after a long struggle. Subcomandante Marcos announced from Tonala that the tour would be delayed by two days as the Zapatistas congregated in the highland hamlet of Oventic for Ramona's funeral. "Comandante Ramona snatched 10 years from death," Marcos said. "[T]he world lost one of those women who give birth to new worlds."