Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba asked the FARC to state whether they are responsible for the death of Caquetá governor Luis Francisco Cuéllar, as conspiracy theories abound.
Survivors of the 1989 US invasion of Panama marked the 20th anniversary with a protest at the old US embassy in Panama City, burning effigies of Barack Obama and Panama’s new president.
Bolivia is launching incentive programs to encourage nationals living abroad to return to the country, including providing land under the new agrarian reform.
In a first for a Latin American city, Mexico City’s legislature voted 39-20 to permit same-sex marriage. Mayor Marcelo Ebrard is expected to sign the bill.
The Red Cross says that of the 39 killed in a clash between government forces and the Yan Kala-Kato Islamic sect in the Nigerian state of Bauchi, some 60% were children.
A UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official protested Thailand’s move to forcibly repatriate some 4,000 ethnic Hmong back to Laos. Some 400 have been removed so far.
In a fourth day of protests during the Ashura holy period in Iran, police fired teargas to disperse demonstrators. The death toll in the past 48 hours stands at at least eight.
Bomb attacks targeted Shi’ite worshippers in Kirkuk and Christian churches in Mosul, leaving seven dead. Over the past six days, 32 Iraqis have been killed in Ashura violence.
A suicide bomb in Muzaffarabad, in Pakistan-administrated Kashmir, killed at least 15 and injured over 100 in an attack on a Shi’ite religious procession marking the Ashura holy period.
Dora “Alicia” Recinos Sorto, 32, was assassinated in El Salvador’s Cabañas department—the second anti-mining activist killed there this week. She was eight months pregnant.
José Alberto Velázquez López, owner of the Mexican newspaper Expresiones de Tulum, was shot by a gunman on a motorcycle, bringing to 12 the number of reporters killed this year in the country.
In a heart-warming display of holiday spirit, the New York Times runs a Christmas Eve op-ed making the case for illegal pre-emptive military strikes on Iran.
