TEHRAN - Iran's opposition stepped up its challenge to the Islamic regime on Wednesday as the authorities intensified a crackdown on the media to try to contain the biggest crisis since the 1979 revolution.
Defeated presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi and his supporters called for a new round of public demonstrations and laid down the gauntlet over the disputed election that returned Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
TEHRAN - Iranian opposition supporters staged a defiant rally against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's re-election on Monday, with his defeated rival set to appear in public for the first time since the vote triggered the worst unrest in a decade.
Iran's supreme leader has also ordered the country's top election supervisory body to look into the complaints raised by former premier Mir Hossein Mousavi, who has branded Friday's election a vote-rigged "charade."
LIMA - Peruvian lawmakers suspended a controversial law that eased restrictions on lumber harvesting in the Amazon rain forest, days after it sparked clashes between police and indigenous protesters, killing dozens of people.
The legislature agreed by a 59 to 49 vote to suspend Decree 1090 -- dubbed the "Law of the Jungle" -- that covers forestry and fauna in Peru's northeastern Amazon rain forest, said Javier Velasquez, the head of Peru's single-chamber Congress.
A decree related to governing private investment also was suspended.
DALLAS - Eighth-grader Steven Rasansky had a front-row seat for a government lesson Monday.
Sitting at his friends' lemonade stand across the street from former President George W. Bush's new home, he watched anti-war protesters and Bush supporters square off with only a city street dividing them.
Front and center in the sweltering 90-degree heat was Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who drew national attention in recent years with her protests near Bush's Crawford ranch as she demanded to speak to him about her son's death in Baghdad.
LIMA - There are conflicting reports on a violent incident in Peru's Amazon jungle region in which both police officers and indigenous protesters were killed.
The authorities, who describe last Friday's incident as a "clash" between the police and protesters manning a roadblock, say 22 policemen and nine civilians were killed.
But leaders of the two-month roadblock say at least 40 indigenous people, including three children, were killed and that the authorities are covering up the massacre by throwing bodies in the river.
![Previous protests against exploration of ancestral lands have ended in violence [EPA]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/imagecache/article_image_thumb/files/article_images/peru_amazon_resources.jpg)
Up to 20 people are thought to have died in the Peruvian Amazon during clashes between police and indigenous Indians protesting against oil and gas exploration on ancestral lands.
Indigenous leaders told AP news agency that 15 protesters had been killed in the unrest, while officials told local radio that five police officers died.
The confrontation apparently began before dawn on Friday in Bagua in the rainforest where companies want to develop oil and natural gas projects, media reports said.
SAN RAMON, Calif./DALLAS - Chevron Corp shareholders rejected a call for an environmental protection report on its operations, disappointing activists and funds worried by a $27 billion damages claim against it in Ecuador.
The closely watched proposal at its annual meeting on Wednesday, for a report on protection of people and the environment in countries where it operates, had 7 percent support from shareholders, the oil company said, citing preliminary results.
LIMA, Peru - After more than six weeks of protests by Peru's Amazonian indigenous groups that have included blockades of major roads and waterways and the shutting down an oil pipeline pumping station, the Peruvian government has begun to crack down.
During the past two weeks, the administration of President Alan Garcia has declared a state of emergency in the country's Amazon provinces, issued a decree allowing the military to help the national police maintain order there, and charged the protest's leaders with crimes against the state.
KABUL - Chanting "Death to America!" and weeping as they prayed, hundreds of Kabul university students marched on Sunday in protest against U.S. air strikes last week that Afghan officials say killed more than 100 civilians.
Washington has acknowledged that some civilians were killed during a battle in which its aircraft bombed Afghan villages.
U.S. forces have not said how many people they believe were killed and have blamed Taliban insurgents for firing from the rooftops of homes where civilians sheltered.
This past Monday morning as I walked briskly with a mass of well-dressed, mostly Jewish people headed into a huge auditorium room, I felt as if I could have been one of a horde of Jews rushing to get into our synagogue to pray on Rosh Hashanah. On any other day, I may in fact have seen the same people at synagogue, but on Monday, we were headed somewhere very different: The 2009 AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee) Policy Conference at the Washington Convention Center. Once inside the big room the synagogue-going feeling disintegrated.
