A combined unit of the Guatemalan army and national police arrested a presumed leader of the Zetas narco-paramilitary network May 18, who authorities believe to be commander of the assassination squad that carried out this week's grisly massacre of 27 farmworkers at a ranch in the northern jungle department of Petén. The detained man is named as Hugo Álvaro Gómez Vásquez, who also goes by "Comandante Bruja" or simply "La Bruja" (The Witch, despite his gender). He was apprehended in Tactic, Alta Verapaz department, following a raid earlier that day on a Petén ranch known as La Mula, just 15 kilometers from Los Cocos ranch where the massacre took place. Authorities say a Zetas encampment was discovered at La Mula, in La Libertad municipality, along with clues on the whereabouts of Gómez Vásquez (see map).

At least 11 people were killed and more than 80 injured May18 as a protest demonstration sparked by a deadly US raid erupted into clashes with security forces in Taliqan, capital of Afghanistan's northeast Takhar province. Protesters armed with Kalashnikov rifles, axes, grenades and petrol bombs battled police, and assaulted a small NATO base on the city's outskirts, local officials and witnesses said. The protest was launched in reaction to the apparent killing of four civilians—including two women—in a night raid conducted by US troops on a nearby village. "American forces entered a house in a village near Taloqan city, the capital of Takhar province, around 12:30 AM. As a result, four people were killed," Abdul Jabar Taqwa, the provincial governor, told McClatchy news service in a telephone interview. An ISAF statement said: "A combined Afghan and coalition security force killed four insurgents, including two armed females during a security operation targeting an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan facilitator in Taloqan district, Takhar province yesterday."

Engineers at Japan's stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant have abandoned their attempt to stabilize reactor Number 3 by flooding it with water, finding that melting fuel rods had created a hole in the chamber, allowing some 3,000 tons of contaminated water to leak into the basement of the reactor building—raising concerns about groundwater contamination. Plant operator TEPCO now says it will pump the 4,000 tons of water out to be transferred to a waste-disposal facility before pumping in new water and installing a "self-circulating" system. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency has approved the new plan—but it appears to carry its own risks. The temperature in reactor No. 3 has been rising since the beginning of the month, reaching more than 200 degrees Celsius (392 Fahrenheit).

Noman Benotman, named as a "former associate" of Osama bin Laden and now an analyst with the UK's Quilliam Foundation think tank, said May16 that an Egyptian veteran militant is acting as an interim operational leader of al-Qaeda pending the expected appointment of deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahri as bin Laden's successor. Benotman named the interim leader as Saif al-Adel, saying he has been appointed al-Qaeda's "caretaker" while the organization collects pledges of loyalty to Zawahri. US prosecutors say Adel helped plan the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings (for which he is wanted by the FBI) and established al-Qaeda training camps in Sudan and Afghanistan in the 1990s. A former Egyptian military officer, al-Adel was once a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a militant organization that has since broken with al-Qaeda. (Reuters, CNN, May 17)

A federal court in Resistencia, capital of Argentina's northern Chaco province, sentenced eight former army officers to life imprisonment May 16 for their role in the Margarita Belén massacre, named for the nearby town where 22 unarmed political prisoners were tortured and killed on Dec. 13, 1976. The 22—including several women who were raped before being shot to death—were members or sympathizers of the Montoneros guerilla group. The military had long maintained that the victims were armed rebels who had ambushed a patrol. But testimony and forensic investigations determined they had been rounded up unarmed and driven to the outskirts of town, where their remains were buried. Five of the bodies have still not been found.

A two-year study released last week by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) of a massive trove of data on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) seized in a raid by the Colombian military two years ago accuses Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez of collaboration with the guerilla movement, winning sensational headlines across Latin America. The archive of electronic documents apparently included the personal files and correspondence of FARC commander Raúl Reyes, who was killed in the same raid. Entitled "The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador and the Secret Archive of Raúl Reyes," the report charges that Chávez allowed the FARC "to use Venezuelan territory for refuge, cross-border operations and political activity, and effectively assigned the group a role in Venezuelan civil society." Chávez even subsidized a FARC office in Caracas, the study asserts.

Guatemalan authorities announced May 15 the discovery of 27 bodies—all but one decapitated—at a ranch known as Los Cocos in La Libertad municipality of the northern jungle department of Petén. The Public Ministry and National Civil Police (PNC) said the victims were farmworkers who were massacred by a narco-trafficking cell known as "Z-200," believed to be an arm of the Mexico-based criminal paramilitary network Los Zetas. The PNC was alerted to the ranch by local campesinos, and found the bodies spread out on the patio. Only six have thus far been identified.

President Barack Obama announced May 14 that he is ordering the Interior Department to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, and speed up seismic work that is a precursor to drilling off the South and mid-Atlantic coasts. In his radio address, Obama said he would also extend oil company leases in both Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico—where work was delayed by the drilling moratorium imposed during last year's devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He said he is also ordering the Interior Department to hold a Gulf of Mexico lease sale this year and two in 2012, thereby completing the department’s five-year plan for the area. (WP, May 14)