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WASHINGTON—A high-ranking US senator said Thursday he told deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to use "constructive means" in pursuing a solution to the political crisis that has wracked the Central American country since Zelaya's ouster more than two months ago. Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized Zelaya for taking "provocative" steps before and after his removal, which contributed to "deep divisions in Honduran society."

Magodonga Mahlangu and her organization, Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), are the 2009 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award winners. WOZA is a grassroots movement of over 60,000 Zimbabweans working throughout their country, empowering women from all walks of life to mobilize and take non-violent action against injustice. Ms. Mahlangu is a bold leader and a pioneer of the women's rights movement in Zimbabwe who has led WOZA's determined campaign of direct action.  Tens of thousands of women have joined WOZA in standing up for human rights and speaking up about the worsening economic, social and political conditions in Zimbabwe. Since its founding in December 2002, WOZA has staged more than 100 non-violent marches in support of democratic reform and women's empowerment. The Government of Zimbabwe has jailed Ms. Mahlangu and thousands of WOZA supporters many times for their participation.

Today we announced the availability of 24 scholarships to attend an intensive ten-day session of this newspaper's School of Authentic Journalism, February 3 to 13 of 2010 on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. The application for scholarships is ten pages long and includes an essay requirement.The video above appeared on CNN last summer but was not filmed by the network. A citizen who had been on a bus to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, to attend a protest against the military coup d'etat there took out his cell phone camera and began filming after soldiers stopped a caravan of buses and ordered everyone out of them. The soldiers - as the video discloses - then shot out the bus tires with their rifles.

Liberian women from all religious and academic backgrounds played a courageous role to end the country's bloody civil war which lasted from 1989 to 2003. Wearing only white T-shirts, the women took on the warlords, including Charles Taylor and nonviolently brought peace to Liberia.  Well, their strength and perseverance in stopping the country's brutal civil war is the subject of a documentary – "Pray the Devil Back to Hell". It is showing in over 200 cities around the world, and tonight (Wednesday) the documentary will be shown at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

Before dawn this morning, a small team of climate and Native Rights activists rappelled from the US observation deck at Niagara Falls. Dangling hundreds of feet above the ground, they sent a special welcome message to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper ahead of his first official visit to the White House to push dirty Tar Sands oil.Not that he’s feeling so welcome anyway. Obama limited the meeting to just one hour. While some have called it a slap in the face, Aides say Harper will turn the other cheek. “The economy, and the clean-energy dialogue,” one aide told the Globe and Mail, “will dominate the discussions.” Obama needed to dodge controversy over oil imports from Canada’s tar sands in the midst of the Climate Legislation debate. Harper needed a story to go with his photo-op.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran security forces clashed with supporters of opposition leader Mirhossein Mousavi and arrested at least 10 of them during annual anti-Israel rallies in central Tehran on Friday, a witness said."Security forces just arrested over 10 people," the witness said. "They are pushing protesters and beating them."Iranian authorities, including Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had warned the opposition against turning anti-Israel rallies to street protests against the clerical establishment.

Sergels torg in central Stockholm was sealed off on Sunday afternoon as rival demonstrators clashed. A demonstration began on the square at around midday to protest against the regime in Iran. At around 2pm a further demonstration began directed against Israel and the two groups clashed in a war of words. "We have had to seal off the square and have to keep the groups apart, there is a tense atmosphere and a lot of verbal abuse being hurled at each other," Kjell Lindgren at Stockholm police told news agency TT. "We have redirected traffic heading towards the square as well, there are too many people milling about," he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged hunger strikers demonstrating against the treatment of 3,000 Iranian refugees in an Iraqi camp to end their protest. Hunger strikers outside the US embassy in London are demanding the US takes responsibility for Camp Ashraf. Residents of the camp say an Iraqi raid there in July left several people dead. Dr Rowan Williams says the situation at the camp is a humanitarian issue "of real magnitude and urgency", but adds there should be no more loss of life.

A losing presidential candidate in Zimbabwe ’s 2008 presidential elections and now a leading opposition figure Simba Makoni will next Tuesday stand trial on allegations of addressing an illegal meeting during his campaigns.Makoni, a close associate of President Robert Mugabe until he broke away from ZANU PF in February last year to challenge the octogenarian dictator, is being charged under the Public Order and Security Act (POSA).The charges against Makoni who came a distant third in the first round of the presidential vote last year won by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai stemmed from an alleged meeting attended by about 400 people in Harare.

An adviser to President Barack Obama and another U.S. official met with the Dalai Lama at his headquarters in Dharamshala, India, to brief the spiritual leader about the administration’s approach to Tibet. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero held talks with the Dalai Lama today and yesterday, according to a statement posted on his office’s Web site. The Dalai Lama detailed to Jarrett the issues he wants Obama to take up with the Chinese government when the president visits China in November, according to the statement.

Security forces in Madagascar fired tear gas on Friday to try to disperse hundreds of opposition supporters gathering for a rally in the capital of the Indian Ocean island. Backers of ousted President Marc Ravalomanana massed in a park near a central square, but security forces moved in saying the demonstration had not been authorised.Andry Rajoelina, former mayor of the capital Antananarivo, spearheaded weeks of violent street protests before toppling Ravalomanana in a March coup with the help of dissident soldiers.Raharinaivo Andrianantoandro, spokesperson for Ravalomanana's party, said they had wanted to demonstrate peacefully to condemn Rajoelina's appointment of a new government this week and to convince the ruling authorities to resume crisis talks.

Amnesty International (AI-Ghana) and the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) have kicked against plans by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to forcibly evict more than 40,000 people leaving in a slum of Accra, popularly called 'Sodom and Gomorrah."The slum is a melting pot of various ethnic groups, with majority of them coming from the three northern regions. It has also gained notoriety for violence and crime. A recent bloody clash between supporters of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the National Patriotic Party (NPP) left four people dead.The latest violence sparked another round of plans to evict the residents, but AI-Ghana and COHRE in a petition to President John Evans Atta Mills copied to relevant ministries and agencies say they are deeply concerned about the threatened forced eviction of more than 40,000 residents.

The history of Non Governmental Organisations dates back for not more than four decades in Ethiopia. They were mainly engaged and their primary area of focus was in relief works and service delivery. It is only in the last 10 years or so that Organisations started to actively work on rights issues. Despite the number of limitations and some witnessed malpractices, NGO’s have been doing a commendable work in Ethiopia over the years. Restricted during the Derg regime, there were only few of them allowed to operate under tight government control. Freedom of association was de facto forbidden to independent professional associations, trade unions, the media, academia, the private business sector, and the like as they might be threats to authoritative ruling system. After the fall of the regime however, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia came into being and created conducive working environment for NGOs/CSOs to work under, adopting a constitution which allows for the freedom of association and other related rights after having ratified different international instruments which comprised of different civil, economic, political and cultural rights.

Telling the truth—especially after imbibing one too many—is a sure way to end up in a Cuban jail. That’s exactly what happened to Juan Carlos Gonzalez Marcos, known by the nickname Panfilo, after he drunkenly burst into a documentary filming and began ranting about Cubans going hungry.Today, a Cuban appeals court upheld the two-year prison sentence Gonzalez Marcos received for “public dangerousness,” rejecting his plea for leniency.When he interrupted the documentary on Cuban music, he began yelling in Spanish, “"What we need here is a little bit of chow!" According to Associated Press reporting, He continued for more than 90 seconds, imploring the camera about how Cubans are going hungry in a country where the communist system is supposed to provide for all citizens' basic needs.

Although the international community has warned that it will not recognise the results of the November elections in Honduras, the de facto government in power since the Jun. 28 coup d'etat says the vote is going ahead.Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, who mediated the unsuccessful talks between ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the coup government, says the elections scheduled for Nov. 29 could be "a solution to the crisis." Others like prominent Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes have expressed similar views.

On May 26 I wrote The Summer of Shove Begins, at a time when pundits and bloggers alike were gnashing teeth over whether US President Barack Obama was overreaching in his now successful agenda to have Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor confirmed by early August and to have a health care bill ready in September.I suggested, as I pretty much always do, that readers ignore the chattering up above and watch the ground game down below and that will decide how the story goes: “the real history will be made, this summer - as during the last two - by the unsung heroes and heroines: the organizers.”

Hundreds of Uighur protesters clashed with Chinese anti-riot police in the capital of China's Muslim region of Xinjiang on Tuesday, two days after ethnic unrest left 156 people dead and more than 800 injured. Chinese police have arrested more than 1,400 people following rioting in the restive far western region.Along with Tibet, Xinjiang is one of the most politically sensitive regions in ChinaThe protesters said their family members had been arbitrarily arrested in a crackdown after rioting broke out in the regional capital Urumqi on Sunday, a Reuters reporter said.

China was criticized Saturday over the treatment of three Hong Kong television journalists who claimed they were detained and beaten up while covering protests in the far western city of Urumqi. Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed leader, Donald Tsang, said he was "deeply concerned" at reports about their treatment at the hands of armed police Friday as they covered unrest in the ethnically divided city. Senior Beijing-based reporter for Hong Kong channel TVB Lam Tza-ho and his cameraman Lam Wing-chuan were tied up and held for hours during Friday's riots along with cameraman Lam Chun-wai from Hong Kong's Now cable TV channel.

News Web sites in China, complying with secret government orders, are requiring that new users log on under their true identities to post comments, a shift in policy that the country’s Internet users and media have fiercely opposed in the past.China has gone to new lengths to control activity by its huge population of Internet users, like these in Beijing on Saturday. Until recently, users could weigh in on news items on many of the affected sites more anonymously, often without registering at all, though the sites were obligated to screen all posts, and the posts could still be traced via Internet protocol addresses.

The top Communist official in Urumqi in western China was dismissed on Saturday as a large deployment of the military police appeared to have brought a measure of peace to the city after two days of large street protests.Urumqi was the site of huge ethnic protests in early July. Li Zhi, the party secretary of Urumqi, lost his post, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday evening. He became the most senior person to be removed since ethnic tensions erupted there in rioting in July.