One protester was killed and three arrested when Haitian police dispersed residents protesting a dump near the Duvivier neighborhood in Port-au-Prince’s impoverished Cité Soleil section.
Honduran police, soldiers and private guards injured three campesinos and detained 12 during an attempt to evict a family from their home in Coyolito on the Zacate Grande peninsula.
Mexico and Venezuela re both “looking to assert [their] leadership in the region, particularly in Central America,” according to a leaked US embassy cable.
Mexican human rights activist Marisela Escobedo Ortiz was buried in Ciudad Juárez two days after she was shot dead by an unidentified man as she was protesting in front of the state government office.
Bolivian prosecutors brought charges against 39 people over an alleged plot to assassinate President Evo Morales and launch an armed rebellion last year.
Police in Argentina sealed off the Villa Soldati area of Buenos Aires following violence between squatters, authorities and local residents in which at least three have been killed.
The governments of Brazil and Argentina announced that they are recognizing Palestine as an independent state within the borders defined in 1967.
Students from the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) held a 48-hour strike to oppose plans for an $800 tuition surcharge at the public university beginning on Jan. 1.
Haiti’s Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced the preliminary results of the chaotic and sometimes violent presidential and legislative elections held on Nov. 28.
A report by a leading French expert concludes that the cholera outbreak in Haiti originated at a base maintained by UN troops near Mirebalais in the Central Plateau.
The secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization executive committee, Saeb Erekat, issued a statement rejecting the US-led conference in Warsaw, ostensibly aimed at brokering Middle East peace. Said Erekat: “Today we face a reality whereby the US Trump administration, in cooperation with the Polish government, is pushing yet a new initiative to annihilate the Palestinian national project.” Poland has been making some efforts to resist turning the conference into a propagandistic anti-Iran meeting dominated by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia. The notable absentees from the summit are meanwhile convening their own meeting in the Russian resort of Sochi. The rival summit is bringing together Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani. (Photo: Ma’an)
As in the Venezuela crisis, Donald Trump, the great enthusiast for dictators, is making a cynical pretense of concern for democracy in Iran. Fortunately, his latest bit of exploitation of the Iranian protesters has blown up in his face. Noting the anniversary of the 1979 revolution, he issued a tweet featuring a meme with an image of a student protester from the 2017 anti-austerity uprising and the words: "40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure." Now, the courageous photographer who snapped the image at the University of Tehran in December 2017, Yalda Moayeri, comes forward to express her outrage at its co-optation by Trump. Alas, Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American feminist who last week met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, seems not to get how she is endangering opposition activists in Iran, allowing the regime to paint them as pawns of imperialism. (Image via @realDonaldTrump)
