At least 44 prisoners were killed in a clash between gangs at the Center for Social Readaptation (CERESO) in Apodaca, Nuevo León. Inmates erected barricades in corridors, and used improvised knives, stones and bars to fight guards and each other. Authorities said the clash pitted adherents of Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel against each other. The uprising was quelled by the state police, who mobilized a helicopter to the scene. The CERESO's director and all guards on duty at the time of the revolt have been detained. The CERESO, with an official capacity of 1,500, was holding some 3,000.

Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov was sworn in as Turkmenistan's president Feb. 17, having won last week's election with a thoroughly predictable 97% of the vote. The seven token competitors were all from the same Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, the only on permitted. Several of them praised the incumbent during the race. The primary Western monitoring group, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), declined to even send observers, citing the lack of real competition. An elaborate inauguration ceremony was attended by some 3,000 in the capital, Ashgabat, but no foreign leaders attended. Congratulatory messages were sent by Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Uzbek leader Islam Karimov, Turkish President Abdullah Gul, and Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev. With natural gas reserves estimated to be the world's fourth largest—exceeding those of the US—Turkmenistan is strategically critical. The hydrocarbon wealth is being used to consolidate support for the regime, with household gas, water and electricity all provided free (and families receiving monthly rations of salt). And Berdymukhamedov says he wants both greater foreign investment and transition to a multi-party system. But the regime remains one of the most autocratic on earth, and Berdymukhamedov is starting more and more to mirror his notoriously megalomaniacal predecessor, Saparmurat Niyazov...

The government of Cyprus has launched a second licensing round for offshore exploratory drilling amid hopes that new fossil fuel deposit discoveries will boost the eurozone country's drooping economy, with record unemployment and a near-junk status credit rating due to its banks' high exposure to Greek debt. An initial licensing round in 2007 only won interest from US firm Noble Energy—which discovered a huge find of some 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Last year, it began drilling in Block 12, the southeastern section of the Cypriot economic zone, which sits close to a large Israeli gas field. However, the effort is raising tensions with Turkey—which claims that blocks included in the second licensing round are within its continental shelf. The Cypriot Foreign Ministry called the claim "unfounded and contrary to international law." The statement said: "The Republic of Cyprus calls on Turkey to end its illegal, provocative and arrogant behavior, to steer clear from issuing threats and to adhere to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea."

India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is pledging an in-depth investigation after the Feb. 9 killing of controversial fugitive paramilitary leader Kartam Surya in a road ambush by presumed militants of the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist)—better known as Naxalites—in Sukma district of Chhattisgarh state. Dubbed the "Scourge of the Maoists," Surya, 29, began his career in counter-insurgency as a "Special Police Officer" in 2005, when the semi-official corps was created. The SPOs are leaders of an irregular anti-guerilla force known as the Salwa Judum, overseen by the official security forces. Surya grew to head his own Salwa Judum militia, the "Surya Group" or "Koya Commandos," which was trained by the Grey Hounds, an elite unit of the state police of Andhra Pradesh (bordering Chhattisgarh on the south). A Chhattisgarh state police honor guard attended his funeral, and state government officials honored him as the "Bastar Tiger," after the southern region of Chhattisgarh where he operated. But rights groups objected to this lionization; petitions filed with India's Supreme Court accuse Judum members and SPOs of over 500 murders, 99 rapes and 103 acts of arson.

An Argentine trade union has instructed its members not to work on British ships or aircraft arriving in the country, as a show of support for the Buenos Aires government's claim of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands, known in Argentina as the Malvinas. In a statement reported in the Argentine press Feb. 14, the country's confederation of transport workers (CATT) said: "We have resolved to boycott any ship with the British flag, or with the lying and invented flag of the Falklands, or with any flag of convenience which the British pirates use. "The world should know that Argentinians are a peaceful people, with deep humanitarian feelings, but with a firm conviction to recover the usurped territory." Argentine newspapers reported that the move also extends to aircraft operated by UK firms.

At least 360 inmates were killed the night of Feb. 14 when a fierce blaze swept through a central prison in Comayagua, Honduras, with several more hospitalized with severe burns. Many victims were burned or suffocated to death in their cells. The nation has been shocked by images of prisoners burned alive clinging to the bars of their cells, desperate to escape. According to one prisoner who escaped by breaking through his ceiling, the guards did not react to pleas for help, and one even flung the keys away, abandoning them before he fled. Other reports indicate guards actually had no keys for exits that inmates fled for—that there was just one set of keys for the facility. Investigators believe the fire started when one prisoner set his mattress alight, possibly in a gang-related conflict. The fire spread rapidly through the wood structure of the prison. After the blaze, relatives of prisoners clashed with police as they tried to force their way into the ruined prison, desperate for news about their loved ones. Police responded with tear gas, and fired shots into the air. Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa pledged a "full and transparent" investigation into the "lamentable and unacceptable" tragedy.

The US Defense Department announced on Feb. 14 that military commission charges have been brought against Guantánamo Bay detainee Majid Shoukat Khan, a Pakistani national who lived in the US from 1996 to early 2002 before returning to Pakistan, where was captured in March 2003 and turned over to the CIA. He is faces charges of conspiracy, murder and attempted murder, violations of the law of war, providing material support for terrorism, and espionage. The charges allege that Khan joined with members of al-Qaeda to prepare attacks against targets in the US, Indonesia and elsewhere. Khan is alleged to have used a false document to travel from his residence in Baltimore, Md., to Karachi, Pakistan, in January of 2002 to conspire with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a plot to blow up underground gasoline storage tanks at gas stations in the US. (Government Security News, Feb. 15)

Protesters took to the streets of Tehran Feb. 14, one year after opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi were put under house arrest for supporting Iran's last protest wave. Since their detention, their whereabouts have not been known. The opposition website Kaleme, which supports the opposition Green Movement, reported convergences of protesters at several points around the capital, holding generally silent marches, despite a heavy presence of riot police. (BBC News, DPA, Feb. 14)