Five members of a Palestinian family jailed by immigration authorities in Texas since November were released on Feb. 3, a day after the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) accepted to reopen their asylum case. Salaheddin Ibrahim, his wife Hanan Ibrahim, who is five months pregnant, and four of their five children had been detained since a Nov. 2 raid on their home by ICE agents. Hanan Ibrahim was jailed at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas, together with the couple's 15-year-old son Hamzeh and daughters Rodaina (14), Maryam (8) and Faten (5). Salaheddin Ibrahim is held at a separate facility in Haskell, Texas and had not been released as of Feb. 4. Three-year-old Zahra Ibrahim, a US-born citizen, has been cared for by her uncle, Ahmad Ibrahim, since her parents' arrest. The family's plight stirred media and public attention, and at least three protests were held outside the Hutto facility during their detention there. (Dallas Morning News, Jan. 31, Feb. 4; WFAA-TV, Feb. 1)

In a decision received on Jan. 30, Los Angeles immigration judge Bruce J. Einhorn terminated deportation proceedings against Khader Musa Hamide and Michel Ibrahim Shehadeh, the last two members of the "Los Angeles Eight" (LA 8) group of Palestinian rights activists who were still fighting deportation. The government has been attempting to deport Hamide and Shehadeh since January 1987 on the basis of their alleged political associations with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In his decision, Einhorn said that the proceedings must be terminated because the government had violated the constitutional rights of Hamide and Shehadeh by its "gross failure" to comply with his orders to produce "potentially exculpatory and other relevant information."

From the British Ahwazi Friendship Society, Feb. 14:

An Ahwazi Arab teacher, Reisan Sawari, died while on hunger strike on Tuesday. Sawari had been held in solitary confinement for a year and was protesting against his conditions. He was a member of the reformist Lejnat al-Wefagh (Reconciliation Committee), which campaigned for Arab rights by constitutional means, including contesting elections. The party was banned by the regime last year, with government spokesmen claiming it was a threat to national security.

Italian police claim to have averted a major terrorist incident after the arrest of 15 men and women in northern Italy, who they said were members of the Red Brigades. The alleged leader of the plot, Alfredo Davanzo, 50, imprisoned for 10 years in the 1980s for Red Brigades actions, has declared himself a political prisoner. Police said the group was planning attacks on the home of Silvio Berlusconi, the offices of his TV company Mediaset and of News Corporation's Sky Italia, the office of right-wing daily Libero, and of ENI, Italy's principal oil company.

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.")