Solitary confinement is used as a form of punishment in Iranian prisons.
HRANA News Agency – A 25-year-old prisoner, Payam Islami, was found dead while locked up in solitary confinement equipped with closed-circuit cameras. He was beaten and transferred to solitary confinement after brawling with another prisoner over a piece of bread. There has been a severe shortage of bread in Rajai-Shar Prison in recent months.
Prison officials claim that Islami hanged himself on Wednesday, July 17, in prison. He was serving time on assault charges.
According to a report by Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), two inmates in Rajai-Shar Prison fought over a piece of bread on Tuesday, July 16. Islami was first taken to the guards’ unit where he was beaten by the prison’s internal manager, Amirian, and the warden, Mardani. Prison officials used batons and polypropylene pipes to hit him.
Following the beating, Islami was transferred to solitary confinement without being allowed to appear in front of a disciplinary board. A few hours later, he was found dead in solitary confinement.
Strikes carried out by miners that are taking place across Colombia, but turned deadly on Wednesday as security forces attempted to impede roadblocks, killing two protesters.
The miners who died took part in protests in the Risaralda department. According to the miners, one of the protesters died of a heart attack after inhaling tear gas.
According to local media, other serious incidents occurred in the departments of Valle del Cauca and Antioquia.
Despite organizers of the strike insisting that there would be no road blocks, Radio Santa Fe reported that in the department of Valle demonstrators blocked roads, burned tractors and subsequently clashed with police.
According to reports, serious disturbances also occurred in the municipalities of Caucasia, Caceres and Buritica in the department of Antioquia, leaving seven police officers and five civilians injured.
The demonstrations are regarding a decree signed into legislation in 2012, ordering the destruction of machinery used in illegal mining.
Miners have called for the repeal of this decree, claiming it is damaging the informal mining sector.
President Juan Manuel Santos on Wednesday defended the decree, stating that he has no interest in ending “artisanal mining”, simply the “criminal mining that is destroying our rivers and forests.”
According to the president, miners with ties to illegal armed groups are inciting artisan miners to used violence.
The miners’ strike follows ongoing demonstrations in the northeastern Catatumbo region. According to the government, these protests were also incited by illegal armed groups.
The UN recently condemned the Colombian government for accusing protesters of being infiltrated by illegal armed groups without providing corroborating evidence.
One person was killed and 21 others were injured in a bomb attack on a nightclub in a northeast Colombian city of Cucuta on Sunday.
According to local police, an unidentified man detonated a grenade inside the downtown club in the early hours of the morning when the club was full.
Cucuta police chief Colonel Carlos Rodriguez told newspaper El Tiempo that investigators are trying to find out who detonated the grenade and whether the attacker is either the deceased person or among the injured.
Additionally, authorities are investigating whether the attack is related to tensions between drug traffickers.
According to El Tiempo, Sunday’s grenade attack was the seventh this year in Cucuta, a city on the Venezuelan border and a hub for smuggling and drug trafficking.
After decades of scrambling on the underside of California bridges to pluck endangered peregrine falcon chicks from ill-placed nests, inseminating female birds and releasing captive-raised fledglings, wildlife biologists have been so successful in bringing back the powerful raptors that they now threaten Southern California's endangered shorebird breeding sites. As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it will no longer permit peregrine chick rescues from Bay Area bridges, a move that they concede will likely lead to fluffy chicks tumbling into the water below and drowning next spring.
"It's a paradox," said Marie Strassburger, chief of the federal agency's division of migratory birds and habitat in Sacramento. "Yes, chicks are cute. I won't deny that for a second."
But she said the loss of chicks that fledge from the nest too early is a natural part of life.
Peregrines nest high on cliffs, trees, buildings and bridges because they hunt by diving, at speeds topping 200 mph, at wild birds they like to eat. When fledging, young peregrines fly well and land poorly. On cliffs, there are plenty of easy spots for a crash landing. On buildings, they scramble back onto window sills or ledges when their first flights go awry, or they hit the sidewalk and can be carried back to their nests. But on bridges, with smooth steel or concrete supports, chicks find no perch and often just hit the water.
"We see the loss of a chick by natural causes as an educational moment as this happens in nature all the time," said Strassburger. "The peregrine falcons on the bridges in the Bay Area just happen to be in a very visible spot so the public is more aware of it."
The recovery of peregrines, and now their potential threat to other species, underscores the fragile balance of nature that biologists have struggled with in recent years: Saving bighorn sheep in Yosemite National Park meant hunting protected mountain lions; reintroducing gray wolves in the Rockies brought a backlash when ranchers complained they were killing livestock; and bringing golden eagle populations back on California's Channel Islands nearly devastated the island fox, one of the world's smallest canines.
In Arizona we citizens try to save all .
The decision to stop saving peregrine chicks is strictly local, says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service migratory bird specialist Alicia King at their Arlington, Virginia headquarters. She said she didn't know of any other place where this was happening, and there's no national position. She noted that in many communities the peregrines are beloved and their chicks are treasured.
"But birds sometimes nest in places that are not the best places for them to nest, and while it's hard to watch, sometimes nature has to take its course," she said.
New York, July 19, 2013--A Dutch journalist and her husband reported missing in Yemen in June have appeared in a video, pleading for their lives and asking for their captors' demands to be met. Judith Spiegel, a Yemen correspondent for Radio Netherlands Worldwide, and her husband, Boudewijn Berendsen, were abducted by an unknown group in the second week of June, the Dutch station reported on Tuesday.
"We call on the kidnappers to immediately release Judith Spiegel and Boudewijn Berendsen," said CPJ's Middle East and North Africa Coordinator Sherif Mansour. "There is no motive that justifies the abduction of an innocent journalist and her husband."
Unknown gunmen abducted Spiegel and Berendsen in the Hadda neighborhood of the capital, according to RNW and news reports. Agence France-Presse reported that the couple was last seen on June 12 and had been reported missing on June 15.
In the video, first published on YouTube on July 13 and described in numerous news reports since then, the Dutch couple said their captors would kill them in 10 days if their demands were not met, news reports said. The demands were not specified in the video.
CNN cited an unnamed tribal leader who said the kidnappers had asked for a ransom but had not disclosed an amount. The leader said the Yemeni government had asked several tribal leaders to intervene in the case and to ensure the safe release of the couple, CNN reported. He told CNN that the Dutch couple was in good health, but depressed.
In the video, the couple said they had told the Dutch ambassador in Yemen about their captor's demands. It is not clear how the couplewas able to contact the Dutch ambassador.
The Dutch foreign minister, Frans Timmermans, said the abduction had the "full attention" of the government. A spokesman for the Dutch Foreign Ministry declined to tell the BBC if the government had been asked to pay a ransom.
The Yemeni Ministry of Interior did not disclose whether the government had information on the whereabouts of the couple, news reports said.
A wave of kidnapping of Yemenis and expatriates has plagued Yemen in recent years, with journalists regarded as especially high-value targets, according to CPJ research. Disgruntled tribesmen have resorted to abductions to pressure the government to release imprisoned family members and extort political and financial compensation. Some captives have been sold to or abducted by Al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants.
For more data and analysis, visit CPJ's Yemen page here.
HRANA News Agency – A prisoner who is told be charged with drug trafficking has been hanged in Parsiloun prison of Khorram Abad.
According to a report by IRIB, the commander of Lorestan province police announced to news of the execution of one prisoner who was charged with drug trafficking.
He said this execution was held in the presence of the judge.
Commander-in-chief Alizade claimed that this prisoner was arrested on charge of having 1 ton and 122 kg opium on February 19, 2013. The death sentence was issued by the branch one of the revolutionary court of Borujerd and confirmed by the supreme court afterwards.
Solitary confinement is used as a form of punishment in Iranian prisons. 
