Eighteen people were killed when a bomb exploded next to a bus owned by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the southeast city of Zahedan, the official IRNA news agency reports. "In this act 18 Zahedan citizens have been martyred," said Qassim Rezai, a local military commander. "Rebels and those who create insecurity martyred these people in a terrorist act by laying a trap close to a bus." It is not clear if those killed were members of the Guards. (Bloomberg, Feb. 14)

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) said in a statement issued Jan. 30 that it is adding 350 Nepalese soldiers to its force in order to fight crime in Port-au-Prince. The light infantry battalion of Nepalese soldiers began arriving the week of Jan. 29 and will be fully deployed by early March, according to MINUSTAH. Maj. Gen. Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, the Brazilian commander of the 9,000-member force, said some Nepalese troops would be deployed almost immediately in the capital's impoverished Cite Soleil neighborhood. "I am determined to increase the pressure on the gangs who have been holding the innocent people of Haiti hostage for so long," Santos Cruz said in the statement. "We must not give the gangs time to relax." (Haiti Support Network News Briefs, Jan. 30 from AP)

On the early morning of Jan. 25 some 100 state and municipal police agents removed workers and campesinos who for more than two weeks had been blocking access to the Los Filos gold mine near the community of Carrizalillo in Eduardo Neri municipality in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Carrizalillo resident Samuel Pena Maturana said some protesters, including two women, were beaten in the process; about 70 protesters were taken to a local police station and held for about four hours before being released. Campesinos also charged that police agents had looted some of their houses and stolen money and food.

Tens of thousands of Mexicans filled Mexico City's huge Zocalo plaza on Jan. 31 in the first large demonstration against the center-right government of President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, who took office on Dec. 1 and now faces popular anger over a dramatic rise in the price of corn and other staples. "Without corn, there's no country," the marchers chanted. "We don't want PAN, we want tortillas." (The initials of Calderon's National Action Party, PAN, form the Spanish for "bread.")

On Jan. 31, rightwing paramilitaries murdered community activist Yolanda Izquierdo in the city of Monteria, capital of Cordoba department in northern Colombia. Izquierdo had been receiving death threats since December, when she attended the first preliminary hearing where paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso was testifying about his crimes. The local prosecutor had requested protection for Izquierdo after the threats against her were reported in the Bogota daily newspaper El Tiempo. Mancuso is one of the top leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC); leaders and members of the group are testifying about their crimes in exchange for leniency. The paramilitary hearings were established in negotiations over an alleged demobilization process, criticized by human rights groups as a sham and a coverup of massive rights violations.

On Feb. 7, some 20,000 Paraguayan campesinos held protests at 10 sites around the country as part of a national mobilization to draw attention to the low income they receive from agricultural production and to demand solutions to their plight. The protests were organized by the National Campesino Federation (FNC), which said they would continue throughout the week. "For now we will only do brief road blockades in the departments of San Pedro, Guaira, Caaguazu, Paraguari and Concepcion, among others, to get attention," said FNC general secretary Odilon Espinola. Heavy rains dampened turnout in some areas, according to Espinola.

For starters, a couple of apologies.

Yes, our February issue is coming out five days late, and our daily weblog has been inactive for nearly a week. This is because your hard-working editor (yours truly) has been down with the flu. (At first I thought it was an ultra-virulent genetically-modified strain of SARS, but I was just being bionoid.)

Mike Ferner writes for Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Feb. 6:

From Alaska to Washington, D.C. yesterday, peace activists escalated their tactics and occupied Congressional offices, demanding elected officials vote against George Bush’s request of $93,000,000,000 to extend the war.