The National Assembly of Ecuador with a slight oligarch majority approved the Organic Law for the Strengthening of the Strategic Mining and Energy Sectors introduced by an oligarch President enthusiastic for ruling by Emergency rule. The legislation removes key environmental licensing requirements for mining projects weakening protections for ecosystems and Indigenous peoples when mining and hydrocarbon concessions frequently overlap with Indigenous territories and some of the country’s best-preserved forests. The new Laws overrode the rights of indigenous communities and nature enshrined in the country’s 2008 Constitution.
Harvard University’s decades-long dream of transforming Boston’s Allston neighbourhood into a Silicon Valley-like innovation hub has stalled. A turn down in the biotech sector and funds withdrawn by the USA federal government have stymied the university’s property bet in the area.
Thailand’s luxury real estate market is going global. Reignwood is stepping up overseas marketing for its $1.6 billion development near Bangkok, hoping foreign buyers will pick up the slack as domestic demand and unsold homes pile up.
The killing of those defending their land against corporate grabbers continues unabated. Quinto Inuma Alvarado, a Peruvian who had been fighting for the collective titling of his community Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu-Huimbayoc, the base of the Coordinating Committee for the Development and Defence of the Indigenous Peoples of the San Martin Region (CODEPISAM) was shot three times on his way back from a seminar for environmental defenders. He was denouncing indiscriminate logging in Huimbayoc.
The Israeli state citing as usual Security Concerns, this time initiated by using its own unhindered air power to smash up towns, cities and essential infrastructure of Iran has closed the Al-Aqsa mosque. Palestinians say the move is part of a wider Israeli strategy to tighten restrictions and entrench control over the mosque complex, in keeping with its armed legalistic encroachments on East Jerusalem. At the same time Israeli settlers have carried out a series of attacks across the occupied West Bank setting homes and vehicles on fire and wounding several Palestinians in what witnesses described as coordinated raids on communities. al-Fandaqumiya and the nearby town of Seilat al-Dahr, south of Jenin and the villages of Qaryout and Jaloud, south of Nablus. They took place during Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. Since the start of the war iagainst Gaza. Israeli forces and settlers have killed more than 1,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 2023, according to the UN.