After the Nov. 15 Group of 20 (G20) summit in Washington, Chinese president Hu Jintao flew to Costa Rica for the first visit by a Chinese president to Central America. He and Costa Rican president Oscar Arias were to sign 11 accords, including the creation of a joint enterprise of Refineria Costarricense de Petroleo and China National Petroleum Corporation to modernize Costa Rica's plant; a line of credit from a Chinese bank to the state-owned Banco de Costa Rica; funding for Chinese language instruction in the Universidad de Costa Rica; and $73 million for the construction of a new sports stadium in San José. China has been moving aggressively into economic activities in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the refinery accord opens the possibility that China may invest up to $1.2 billion in a new refinery. (Univision, Nov. 16 from AFP)

On Nov. 11 Costa Rica's Legislative Assembly passed the last enabling laws necessary for the implementation of the Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), a trade accord strongly promoted by the US. President Arias said it would take effect on Jan. 1. The accord was signed in 2004, and all the other members have implemented it, but Costa Rican legislators wouldn't move on the issue until it was approved in a referendum on Oct. 7, 2007 after a bitter campaign. (Miami Herald, Nov. 11 from AP)

Some 400,000 Chilean public employees staged a two-day strike on Nov. 11 and 12 to push for a 14.5% pay increase. The National Association of Government Employees (ANEF), which includes 15 unions and associations, said the job action was 90% effective, with professors, health workers, administrative workers and municipal workers honoring the strike call. Government service offices were closed, garbage collection stopped in some areas, and some medical services were shut down. The government of Socialist president Michelle Bachelet called the protest "blackmail"; Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma said workers wouldn't be paid for the two days they missed.

On Nov. 12 Cuba released La Paz en Colombia (Peace in Colombia), a 265-page book by former president Fidel Castro giving new information about the Cuban government's relations with Colombia's leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In the book, which Castro says took 400 hours of work, the former president repeats criticisms he made last July of the FARC's treatment of prisoners of war and "the capture and holding of civilians not involved in the war." In the book he also notes that holding "prisoners and hostages deprived the combatants of the ability to maneuver."

Puerto Rico's conservative New Progressive Party (PNP) gained easily over the centrist Popular Democratic Party (PPD) in elections on Nov. 4, with PNP gubernatorial candidate Luis Fortuno winning 52.8% of the vote to 41.3% for the PPD candidate, current governor Anibal Acevedo Vila. Rogelio Figueroa of Puerto Ricans for Puerto Rico (PPR), a new party with an environmental orientation, got 2.8% of the vote, while Edwin Irizarry of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP) followed with 2%. The PNP won 60 of the 78 seats in the legislature, and the PPD won the remaining 18. The PNP won 48 mayorships to 30 for the PPD.

US President-elect Barack Obama in his Nov. 16 appearance on 60 Minutes was asked by interviewer Steve Kroft: "Can you give us some sense of when you might start redeployments out of Iraq?" His answer stated fairly explicitly that his planned Iraq draw-down would be concomitant with an escalation in Afghanistan:

A Kentucky jury Nov. 14 ordered three members of the Imperial Klans of America (IKA), including "Imperial Wizard" Ron Edwards, to pay $1.5 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages for a racially motivated attack against Jordan Gruver, a 16-year-old boy of Panamanian descent, during an apparent Klan recruitment event at a county fair in Meade, Ky. Gruver, who was severely beaten by Edwards' followers, is a US citizen, but the Klansmen mistakenly believed he was an undocumented immigrant, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented the youth in the case.

Jill McGivering in a Nov. 12 report for the BBC, "Rough justice for Afghan women inmates," visits Afghanistan's dismal Lashkar Gah prison in Helmand, revealing that women and teenage girls continue to be incarcerated for lengthy terms in harsh conditions for such crimes as pre-marital sex or defending themselves against abusive spouses in the post-Taliban era. Of the prison's seven female prisoners she interviewed, this case is perhaps the most poignant: