The Peruvian Supreme Court unanimously upheld a 25-year sentence for ex-president Alberto Fujimori for deaths caused by a paramilitary unit during his administration.
A Guatemalan court issued warrants for two businessmen as “intellectual authors” in the murder of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg, who had warned that Presdient Álvaro Colom sought his death.
Mexico’s National Human Rights Commission issued a harsh “recommendation” to Guerrero Gov. Zeferino Torreblanca in the unsolved case of two indigenous leaders kidnapped last year.
A judge in Oaxaca issued an order giving the federal government 10 days to release activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno, held since October for the murder of journalist Brad Will.
Barack Obama pledges $2.77 billion for Israel in 2010, and $30 billion over the next decade. Israel is for the first time bound to use 75% of the aid to buy military material from the US.
Eleven Iranian police agents were killed when a highway patrol intercepted what officials called an “illicit drug convoy” in Southern Khorasan Province near the Afghan border.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama have agreed to fund a special counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen to tackle the rising threat from the country.
Some 400 prisoners revolted at Huancas prison in the northeastern Peruvian city of Chachapoyas on New Years Eve, taking several guards hostage and seizing part of the facility.
On New Years Eve, a federal judge dismissed all criminal charges against five Blackwater guards accused in the massacre of 17 innocent Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisur Square.
The Israeli daily Ha’aretz reports that construction in West Bank settlements is “booming” despite the declared freeze, with expansion underway at more than 50 settlements and two industrial zones.
Several international activists were injured by Egyptian riot police during demonstrations with the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo. Egypt has denied the march access to the besieged Strip.
In a move heralded by human rights groups, Israel’s supreme court ordered the military to allow Palestinians to travel on part of a major highway that runs through the West Bank.
