UN armored vehicles patrol East Timor's capital Dili under a state of emergency following an attack that critically wounded the President José Ramos-Horta Feb. 11. Ramos-Horta, who shared the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize (with Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo), was shot in the chest and stomach on the road in front of his house in an apparent coup attempt. His guards returned fire, killing wanted rebel leader Alfredo Reinado. Ramos-Horta was airlifted to an Australian hospital where surgeons said he was "extremely lucky to be alive" after they operated for three hours to remove bullet fragments and repair chest wounds. Gunmen also attacked Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao's motorcade an hour later, but he escaped unhurt.

Local schoolteacher Felipe Hernández Yuena was detained Feb. 5 in the municipal government building at Venustiano Carranza, a conflicted town in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, accused of "sedition and riot." Showing bruises on his face, arms and abdomen, Hernández Yuena said that while in custody he was beaten and tortured by masked men he believed were from military intelligence, who questioned him about whether recent anti-NAFTA protests in the state capital, Tuxtla, were organized by the clandestine Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). (La Jornada, Feb. 7)

Jan Eliasson, UN special envoy for Darfur, warns that deployment of peacekeeping forces continues to be stalled and that rebel groups show little willingness to enter peace talks. (NYT, Feb. 9) Meanwhile, the ongoing carnage barely gets headlines anymore. This Feb. 8 Reuters account rated less than two column-inches at the bottom of page 5 in the following day's Times:

Sudanese government aircraft, army and militia attacked three towns in West Darfur state on Friday, causing heavy civilian casualties, Darfur rebels and witnesses said.

Matthew Wald reported for the New York Times Feb. 6. that the US Energy Department is subsidizing two Russian nuclear institutes at Nizhny Novgorod that are building key parts of the Bushehr reactor in Iran that Washington has spent years trying to stop. One institute, the Scientific Research Institute of Measuring Systems, is providing control systems for the Iranian plant; the other is providing hundreds of pumps and ventilation fans. Russia has agreed to take back the spent fuel from the Bushehr plant, so the plutonium cannot be recovered by the Iranians. The Energy Department is subsidizing the institutes under the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, set up after the collapse of the USSR to maintain control of Soviet nuclear expertise and technology.

Clearing vast tracts of land for biofuels production would hinder—not help—the effort to slow global warming, according to two new studies published in the journal Science. Although such fuels emit less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, clearing forests and other native ecosystems releases carbon dioxide from plants and soil through fire or decomposition. Additionally, cropland absorbs less carbon than the native ecosystems it replaces.

Congolese forces arrested Col. Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, accused former leader of the rebel National Integrationist Front (FNI), and handed him over to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Ngudjolo is alleged to have played a key role in a murderous attack on the village of Bogoro, Ituri province, in February 2003. He is facing three counts of crimes against humanity and six counts of war crimes, including sexual slavery and the use of child soldiers. He is the third Congolese national sent to the ICC, after Thomas Lubanga Dyilo and Germain Katanga. (UN News Service via AllAfrica, Feb. 7)

Pakistani Taliban fighters led by commander Baitullah Mehsud Feb. 6 announced the suspension of attacks against security forces in the Waziristan tribal region and the Swat valley for an indefinite period. Maulvi Muhammad Omar, a spokesman for the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, told reporters in Peshawar from an undisclosed location that the militants had stopped attacks because the "government has softened operations" against the militants. "We have stated earlier that if anyone does not want to fight us, we will also not fight with them. But if anyone imposes war on us we will fight with them," Omar said. But in Islamabad, interim Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan said the security forces had "broken the back of the militants and they are on the run." Khan said a grand jirga or council of elders will be convened soon to end hostilities in the tribal regions. (PTI, Feb. 6)

A 37-year-old US businesswoman and married mother of three is seeking justice after she was thrown in jail by Saudi Arabia's religious police for sitting with a male colleague at a Starbucks coffee shop in Riyadh. Yara, who does not want her last name published, was bruised and crying when she was released from a day in prison after she was strip-searched, threatened and forced to sign confessions by the kingdom's "Mutaween," or Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.