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Bradley Manning, 22-year-old US soldier posted to Iraq in the military intelligence service, shall be tried – and, of course, sentenced- by a war council that the high command of his own Army will preside over. His crime is to have spread true but secret information on the US wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the 2nd and 3rd of August, the Argentinean province of San Juan was the venue for the 39th meeting of the board of the Common Market and Summit of the Leaders of MERCOSUR and Associated States . The main achievement was the Customs Code “a document, a very important piece of regional legislation”, which has been agreed, and which is the result of six years of work.

Muscovites have brought airports to a standstill with attempts to leave the Russian capital where the air has become unbreathable and visibility enormously reduced due to the dense smoke clouds from fires which in the last hours have been growing, due mainly to the very high temperatures of this summer; the highest registered in decades.

The three-term mayor of Hiroshima who spearheaded a global campaign for nuclear disarmament and a photographer who documented river pollution in his native China are among the 2010 winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards. The awards are considered Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. They are named after a popular Philippine president who died in a plane crash in 1957.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden said Sunday the chances the US will attack Iran are increasing. Hayden made the comment in an interview on CNN.
Candy Crowley: “If it should, is there any alternative to taking out their facilities?”
Michael Hayden: “It seems inexorable, doesn’t it? We engage, they continue to move forward.”

The Convergence of Cultures calls for urgent action to help refugees in Libya where reports of violence have been received with authorities failing to assist the injured and making deportations to countries in humanitarian crisis. Many of the victims are men, women and children rejected by European authorities, in violation of the Geneva Convention.

The proposal to legalize whale killing went down in flames in recent Morocco meeting.
In a few short weeks, the biggest whale-saving petition in history, signed by an extraordinary number of 1.2 million of worldwide people, will be delivered directly to the key delegates at the International Whaling Commission meeting.

Mayors for Peace announced that 4.037 member cities in 144 countries and regions have joined the campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons by 2020. Dr. Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima and President of Mayors for Peace spearheads an international campaign for nuclear weapon states to stop considering cities as targets for weapons of mass destruction.

In 1999, preoccupied with questions about the fundamental nature of humanity and the most pressing issues of our time, filmmaker Jeremy Gilley launched Peace One Day and set out to find a starting point for peace. He had a mission: to document his efforts to establish the first ever annual day of global ceasefire and non-violence with a fixed calendar date.

In Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, Israel’s Foreign Minister has dismissed the prospect of Palestinian statehood within the next two years, by 2012. Avigdor Lieberman made the comment to reporters in Jerusalem.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is due in Washington next week for talks with President Obama.