Colombia’s DAS secret police agency was officially closed after years of scandals concerning paramilitary ties, assassinations, illegal wiretapping and corruption. DAS employees leaked hundreds of classified documents as the agency shut.
Haitian police arrested opposition legislative deputy Arnel Bélizaire at the Port-au-Prienc airport as he returned from an official visit to France and then whisked him to the National Penitentiary, sparking protests against President Michel Martelly.
A dispute between the government of right-wing president Ricardo Martinelli and the Ngöbe-Buglé indigenous group flared up again as the National Assembly began to debate changes to the Mining Code.
Mexican officials are having to deny that US agencies were violating Mexican sovereignty by carrying out undercover operations aimed at Mexican drug cartels.
OK, our winter fund drive now stands at $60. So we have $4,940 to go. Now eight of you have responded. Do we really only have eight readers? Our web states indicate we have thousands. Well, then…?
Kyrgyzstan’s newly elected president, Almazbek Atambayev, announced upon his victory that he will close Manas air base, which has been critical to the US campaign in Afghanistan, after the lease expires in 2014.
As the Kenyan military and Shabab rebels accuse each other of killing civilians in southern Somalia, a BBC report suggests Nairobi hopes to carve a separatist enclave to be called “Azania” out of Somalia as a military-controlled “buffer zone.”
As elite voices in the West call for breaking Libya up along “tribal lines,” the country’s Berbers—who have the most to fear from a centralized Arab-dominated regime—issued a statement calling for a unified state with equal rights for all.
Gustavo Petro, a former leader of the M-19 guerilla movement and longtime socialist legislator, was elected mayor of Bogotá. Petro called the vote a “victory of the desire for change.” Pre-electoral violence saw 41 candidates murdered.
Risk analysis and mapping company Maplecroft released the Climate Change Vulnerability Index, examining the climate risks and adaptive capacity of 193 nations. Many of the top-listed nations are now being devastated by floods.
Mexico’s former President Vicente Fox again spoke out for drug legalization, telling a Washington DC meeting of the right-libertarian Cato Institute that prohibition bears responsibility for the horrific toll in his country’s cartel wars
The clandestine online activist network Anonymous released an Internet video demanding that Los Zetas, Mexico’s bloodiest drug cartel, release one of its members who was kidnapped from a street protest in Veracruz.
