Lawmakers in Mexico's lower-house Chamber of Deputies Feb. 26 removed a draconian measure from their plan to reform the country's judicial system that would have given police the power to enter homes without first obtaining a warrant in emergencies and in cases of hot pursuit. Human rights groups had strongly opposed the measure, and the press labeled the proposed measure the "Gestapo law." The last-minute change delays passage of the constitutional reform that is meant to speed up trials that can now last years and to better prepare the state to battle narcotics traffickers. "In this country, no one is satisfied with our justice system," said César Camacho Quiroz, a legislator with the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), who opposed the expanded police powers.

Dozens of Senegalese gays are reported to have fled to neighboring Gambia and Mali following a wave of arrests and violent anti-gay street protests. The anti-gay campaign began when newspapers reported on a gay wedding that took place on the outskirts of the capital Dakar in early February—sparking a wave of sensationalist press stories on homosexuality, and prompting authorities to arrest all who attended the wedding, including musicians.

Patrick Cockburn writes for The Independent, Feb. 27:

Iraq is disintegrating faster than ever. The Turkish army invaded the north of the country last week and is still there. Iraqi Kurdistan is becoming like Gaza where Israel can send in its tanks and helicopters at will.

Kinda says it all, doesn't it? From AP, Feb. 23:

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi military on Saturday indefinitely banned all motorcycles, bicycles and hand-pushed and horse-drawn carts from the streets of Baghdad, a military spokesman said.

After 27 months of negotiations and despite official efforts to decertify their union, tens of thousands of Puerto Rican public school teachers went on strike on Feb. 21. Public employees are barred from striking under Puerto Rican law, and the government of Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila announced that it would keep schools open. Striking teachers blocked school doors and in some cases chained them shut. Police agents beat a teacher with clubs at the entrance to the Gabriela Mistral school in San Juan on Feb. 21 and threw her to the ground. At least 12 teachers were arrested across the island on the first day.

Campesinos and farmers started an open-ended strike in eight Peruvian departments on Feb. 18, holding marches and blocking highways to demand government measures to ease the impact of a free trade agreement (FTA, or TLC in Spanish) with the US. The action was called by the National Convention of Agriculture (Conveagro), the National Council of Irrigation Users (JNUDR) and the National Agrarian Confederation (CNA). According to JNUDR president Enrique Malaga, the FTA, which is to lift tariffs on heavily subsidized US farm products, will harm more than 1.75 million Peruvian farms.

Argentine president Cristina Fernandez hosted a meeting in Buenos Aires on Feb. 23 with Bolivian president Evo Morales and Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva about a possible energy crisis in the countries and to consolidate plans for regional integration. Bolivia has offered to redirect some of its natural gas to Argentina from Brazil, where the winters are milder. Earlier in the week Buenos Aires hosted a meeting of Latin American and Arab foreign ministers; trade between the two regions has been on the rise. (La Jornada, Mexico, Feb. 24)

In a communique made public on Feb. 21, Mexico's rebel Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) denied any connection to the Jan. 30 shooting death of police director Alejandro Barrita Ortiz, a bodyguard and two civilians in the southern state of Oaxaca. Barrita Ortiz headed a police unit that guards banks and other businesses; the government blames his death on criminals. The communique said he was involved in the May 2007 disappearance of two EPR leaders, Edmundo Reyes Amaya and Gabriel Alberto Cruz Sanchez, but charged that he was murdered because he had become "inconvenient for the government of [Oaxaca governor] Ulises Ruiz [Ortiz]." (La Jornada, Feb. 22)