Despite advances for the peace process with the FARC rebels, the wave of assassinations of social leaders across Colombia by presumed paramilitary hitmen is unabated.
Accused of carrying out 3,000 extrajudicial executions, the Philippines' ultra-hardline President Duterte now threatens to kill human rights activists who dare to complain about it.
Peru's new defense minister, Jorge Nieto Montesinos, announced that he will focus on wiping out remnant Shining Path guerillas operating in the country's main coca-producing region.
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.
