International

Attention Dick Cheney: Anyone who thought that by invading Iraq the U.S. would get a lock on Iraq's oil has another think coming.

Yesterday, Iraq’s cabinet approved a deal with the China National Petroleum Corporation and BP (British Petroleum) to develop Iraq’s largest oil field. CNPC is China’s biggest oil company.

Alexis Arguello, 57, a three-time world champion boxer and national sports legend from Nicaragua, died July 1. Arguello was elected mayor of the country’s capital city of Managua last year from the current governing Sandinista Party. His sudden death is being investigated, but reports say it was a probable suicide.

A woman eats a fried grasshopper Monday in Hague, the Netherlands, June 29, 2009. Gerda Verburg, Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality of the Netherlands presented Monday the Cabinet Note on Sustainable Food. It is the first note of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality (LNV). A company has been selected as site of the presentation and it will become a leading laboratory for sustainable food in the next few years

Israeli commandos have seized the crew of a ship carrying aid to Gaza and forced the vessel to sail to an Israeli port.

The Israeli military said that it had boarded The Spirit of Humanity as it tried to break Tel Aviv's siege of the territory last night. The 21 solidarity activists aboard had ignored a radio message warning that they would not be allowed to enter Gazan waters.

Iran's defeated presidential candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi said in a statement posted on his website on Wednesday that Iran's new government is "illegitimate."

"From now on ...the majority of society, of which I am a member, will not accept its (the new government's) legitimacy," the statement said.

More than 28,000 Brazilians have been rescued from conditions of modern slavery since 2003, according to figures of the Department of Work Inspection (STI) of the Ministry of Work and Employment, informed sources here.

Detection and rescue of Brazilians from this degrading form of work is the task of the Special Mobile Legal Group of STI, and statistics point to farm and agricultural activities as top perpetrators of this kind of labor force.

Solidarity activists have called on Tel Aviv to "call off their attack dogs" after commandos boarded their converted ferry and threatened to arrest them unless they turned back from Gaza.

The Spirit of Humanity, which left Larnaca on Monday with three tons of medical supplies, toys and building materials, was scheduled to arrive at the besieged territory this afternoon.

The generals, oligarchs and corrupt politicians who perpetrated Sunday’s coup d’état against Honduran president Manuel Zelaya are beginning to sweat as militant demonstrations and strikes continue in the capital of Tegucigalpa and elsewhere, as stories of possible dissent on the part of military units begin to surface, and as the entire world expresses its repudiation of what Venezuelan president Chavez correctly called a reversion to “troglodyte” (cave man) methods of changing governments.

Shanghai authorities have announced that they are holding nine people in an investigation into why a nearly completed block of flats collapsed, killing one worker.

The incident on Saturday was an embarrassment for Shanghai's leaders as they prepare to showcase the city - one of China's wealthiest and the most modern - during the 2010 World Expo.

"Not all females are women," reads a poster emblazoned in red. "I am the pink sheep of my family!" is the message on another, while a third, very cheekily proclaims, "I don’t give a f***, I am a greedy bisexual"!

New Delhi’s second Queer Pride parade was flamboyant, riveting and raucous - a medley of rainbow hues, music, and in-your-face attitudes that infused an infectious energy and verve to a sultry, simmering Sunday evening.