Lebanon’s hashish heartland of the Bekaa Valley is increasingly embroiled in the civil war raging across the border in Syria, with a wave of sectarian clashes and abductions.
Negotiators from Colombia's government and the FARC rebels signed an agreement on agrarian reform, calling for redistribution of illegally held or underused lands.
President Obama said he will wait until he meets with his Mexican counterpart Enrique Peña Nieto this week to discuss Mexico's decision to curtail access of US security agencies.
Violence continues to escalate in Mexico’s west-central state of Michoacán, with transport suspended to several conflicted towns, leaving them cut off from the outside world.
Colombia's ex-VP Francisco Santos is accused of fabricating FARC attacks in a stratagem to undermine peace talks overseen by his cousin and rival President Manuel Santos.
The US accused Guinea-Bissau's top military official, Gen. Antonio Indjai, of plotting a cocaine-for-weapons deal with Colombia's FARC rebels—who were actually DEA agents.
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is expected to increase for a third straight year, expanding even to new areas of the country, warns the UN Office of Drugs and Crime.
Six people were strangled to death and one decapitated in the tourist resort of Cancún, while shoot-outs and new mass graves are reported from Monterrey and Tamaulipas.
Colombia announced the arrest of Cesar Demar Vernaza AKA “El Empresario”—accused crime boss of Ecuador and top South American operative of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.
Citing escalated criminal violence, Honduras’ Congress suspended the prosecutor general—but has not acted against the National Police chief, accused of death squad links.
The Brazilian state of Acre declared a state of “social emergency” in response to a surge of undocumented migrants from neighboring Bolivia and Peru.
Several were killed in confrontations across Mexico’s violence-torn Michoacán state—including when gunmen fired on crowds commemorating the death of Emiliano Zapata.
