GUATEMALA: Guatemalan authorities violated indigenous rights by permitting a huge nickel mine on tribal land almost two decades ago, according to a ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights today.

The landmark verdict marks a monumental step in a four-decade struggle for indigenous land rights and a long, bitter legal battle.

The decision also comes at the close of the United Nations climate summit Cop28, which stressed the importance of renewables and energy transition minerals like nickel.

PAKISTAN: Militants attacked a regional police headquarters and two military posts in north-west Pakistan early today, triggering firefights that killed four officers and three insurgents, security officials said.

The attacks came three days after a suicide bomber in the same region rammed his car into a police station's main gate and five others opened fire, killing 23 officers in this year’s worst attack on troops.

CHINA: Two subway trains collided in heavy snow in Beijing, sending 515 people to the hospital, including 102 with broken bones, authorities said today.

The accident occurred on Thursday evening in Beijing’s mountainous west on an above-ground portion of the sprawling subway system’s Changping line.

BRAZIL: Brazil’s Congress on Thursday overturned a veto by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva so it can reinstate legislation that undoes protections of indigenous peoples’ land rights. 

Both federal deputies and senators voted by a wide margin to support a Bill that argues the date Brazil’s constitution was promulgated, October 5, 1988, is the deadline by which indigenous peoples had to be physically occupying or fighting legally to reoccupy territory in order to claim land allotments.