Authorities in the northwestern Chinese province of Gansu have imposed a curfew on districts of Longnan city following two days of violence between security forces and local residents resisting eviction. Fighting began Nov. 17, when some 1,000 people attacked a government office, smashing cars and beating police and officials. A group of more than 30 seeking redress for the loss of their homes and land were joined by hundreds more outside a petition office.

Missiles from an apparent US drone struck a house near the town of Mir Ali in Pakistan's North Waziristan region early Nov. 22, killing at least four. Mir Ali has been hit repeatedly in the more than 20 US air-strikes on Pakistan since August. (NYT, Nov. 22) The previous day, a bomb killed eight mourners at the funeral of a Shi'ite cleric, Syed Zahid Iqbal Shahid, who had been shot that morning by gunmen on a motorbike in Dera Ismail Khan, near Bannu (NWFP). The bombing was followed by a riot in which a mob set fire to shops and vehicles and pelted police with rocks. (Dawn, Nov. 21; NYT, Nov. 22)

The president of a failed Colombian financial firm suspected of laundering drug profits and bilking thousands of mostly poor investors of millions of dollars was arrested in Panama and promptly deported Nov. 20. David Murcia Guzmán, 28, founder of the DMG financial services firm, was detained near Panama City as he prepared to flee to Costa Rica, which has no extradition treaty with Colombia.

From the BBC News, Nov. 18:

UK drug users 'damaging Colombia'
Drug users in the UK are causing an environmental catastrophe in Colombia, the country's vice-president has told a meeting of police chiefs.

Mexican authorities detained the country's former Drug Czar—officially the Special Investigative Sub-Prosecutor for Organized Delinquency (SIEDO)—Noé Ramírez Mandujano Nov. 20, a day after he voluntarily spoke to investigators. Ramírez was named to the post in December 2006 when President Felipe Calderón took office. He submitted his resignation in July at the request of the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR).

A typically subtle distortion is at work in this Nov. 21 New York Times story, "Global Forecast by American Intelligence Expects Al Qaeda's Appeal to Falter." You have to read halfway through the story before you find out that the report's more important point is that US power is also going to decline. This correlation should not be surprising. The Middle East's secular left forces consider political Islam and US imperialism to be twin "poles of terrorism." As we've said many times before, the terrorists love the GWOT.

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia Nov. 20 ordered the release of five Algerian detainees from Guantánamo Bay. In the first ruling on detainees' rights since the June Supreme Court decision in Boumediene v. Bush, Judge Richard Leon found that the government's evidence was insufficient that the men were planning to travel to Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda, the basis for ther classification as "enemy combatants."

US President-elect Barack Obama's pick to run the Department of Homeland Security, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, is described by the AP Nov. 20 as "tough on illegal immigration"—although she has been a skeptic on the border wall, having once said, "You build a 50-foot wall, somebody will find a 51-foot ladder." We've noted that she signed last year's state law imposing sanctions on employers who hire undocumented immigrants, but has opposed or vetoed other more draconian measures. In 2005, she declared a state of emergency for Arizona counties along the Mexican border, and pressured Homeland Security for stepped up enforcement.