The United Nations warned that Colombia's peace process faces "major challenges," urging the government and FARC rebels to "act swiftly" to demobilize and disarm the guerillas.
Army troops discovered over 30 bodies buried in mass graves in Mexico's southern state of Guerrero, where the back-country is effectively run by murderous narco-gangs.
With Colombia's Congress voting to approve the revised peace accord with the FARC rebels, the country is on a countdown to the full demobilization of the guerilla army.
Bloody internecine fighting in Guerrero state fuels fears that Mexico's anti-narco "community police" groups could themselves be co-opted by the warring cartels.
A joint security force bringing together the three nations of Central America's Northern Triangle officially began operations to fight narco-gangs and organized crime.
President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC leader Rodrigo Londono AKA "Timochenko" signed a new peace agreement to replace the one rejected by voters in a national plebiscite.
Joe Arpaio and Rudolph Giuliani, short-listed for Homeland Security secretary, both have extensive experience in running detainment camps for undocumented immigrants.
With Afghanistan's opium crop breaking all records, a three-way war is developing over the cultivation zones, as government forces, the Taliban and ISIS battle for control.
Mexico's imprisoned top drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán came another step closer to extradition when a judge turned down five requests for an injunction to halt it.
Felipe Flores, former police chief of Iguala, the Mexican city where 43 college students disappeared in 2014, was finally apprehended after two years as a fugitive.
The Philippines' ultra-hardline President Duterte, in announcing his "separation" from the US, praised China for providing aid without criticizing his atrocious human rights record.
A wave of paramilitary terror grips the Sierra Tarahumara in northern Mexico's Chihuahua state, as the Sinaloa Cartel seeks control over the opium and cannabis cultivation zone.
