Morocco's leading independent human rights group called on the government Aug. 29 to start talks to try to end a hunger strike by prisoners from Morocco-occupied Western Sahara who are demanding better conditions. The Moroccan Human Rights Association (AMDH) said 29 prisoners in three prisons—one in the disputed territory and two in northern Moroccan cities—had refused to eat for three weeks. "The strike has started to seriously take its toll on their health," said MDH spokesman Abdelilah Benabdeslam. "Their lives are at risk now."

The group of New York cyclists who join the monthly Critical Mass Bike Ride is asking Mayor Michael Bloomberg to join in so he can see first-hand how they're treated by police. They also say they are going to launch a letter campaign asking the mayor for a public hearing to explain why money is being spent to police their events. "Critical Mass happens around the world," said Sara Stout of World Carfree Network.

One man was killed and five officers were injured during clashes between Kurdish protesters and police in southeastern Turkish city of Batman Aug. 29. The violence flared after some 1,000 Kurds marched to demand the release of the bodies of six men accused of being Kurdish separatist guerillas killed in fighting with Turkish military last week. The fighting comes despite a unilateral ceasefire announced by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) 10 days ago.

Expounding its ideology in a lengthy manifesto, the group "al Qaeda in Iraq" says the insurgency is stronger than the US admits and vows to "destroy the American empire." The group says in an e-book which surfaced on the Internet last week: "Every now and then, the schoolboys of the Pentagon and the adolescents of the Black House [sic] keep blasting our ears with talks of pure arrogance and conviction saying, 'We will not leave Iraq until we accomplish our mission.' This desperate catchphrase that they keep repeating is used to make the public believe that the mujahedeens are in bad shape, as if they are begging the Americans, saying, 'Please Americans, leave Iraq.'"

Oil prices hit new record highs, crossing $70 a barrel in Asian trading, as Hurricane Katrina threatened the Gulf of Mexico region and Bush urged residents of New Orleans to comply with a general evacuation order. A state of emergency has been declared for Louisiana and Mississippi. (AFX, Aug. 28) Chevron and Exxon have both shut offshore oil and gas production and evacuated staff, and the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port closed its pipeline to refineries. (Bloomberg, Aug. 28)

Violence continues to escalate in Haiti, with the world paying very little note. In a grim irony, the latest massacre—carried out with the complicity of police forces—took place at a football match organized to promote peace. UN "peacekeeping" forces are also implicated in recent attacks on civilians. Amidst the bloodshed, peasants rallied last week, protesting that a "neoliberal" economic model is being imposed that will further entrench the majority in poverty.

Henry Kissinger, a key architect of the US war in Vietnam told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" Aug. 28 that he has "a very uneasy feeling" that some of the same factors that damaged support for the war in the 1960s are re-emerging in the two-year-old war in Iraq. "For me, the tragedy of Vietnam was the divisions that occurred in the United States that made it, in the end, impossible to achieve an outcome that was compatible with the sacrifices that had been made," said the former secretary of state (and noted war criminal).

A Reuters report Aug. 18 depicts the situation in the Sinai Peninsula escalating to a small counter-insurgency war between Egyptian security forces and Bedouin Islamic militants. A landmine damaged an Egyptian police vehicle in northern Sinai Aug. 27, injuring a police colonel and a civilian Bdouin tracker helping police hunt down the group suspected of seven bombings in the area. It was the third such blast in Sinai since police last week launched a large-scale search operation for the group, believed to be Sinai Bedouin.