On Jan. 10 the World Bank's Office of the Compliance Adviser Ombudsman (CAO) released a report criticizing the process through which the bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) granted a $30 million loan in 2009 to the Honduran-based food-product company Corporación Dinant. An audit that the CAO started in April 2012 found that the IFC failed to apply its own ethical standards in issuing the loan, which is to be used in part for growing African oil palms in the Aguán Valley in northern Honduras. The Aguán's largest landowner is Dinant’s founder, the politically well-connected cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum. Producing palm oil has become highly profitable, since the oil can be used both for food and as biofuel.

Six workers at the One World Apparel S.A. garment assembly plant in the north of Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, were given notices of dismissal on Jan. 8, four weeks after workers shut down production in the city’s apparel sector with Dec. 10 and Dec. 11 protests demanding a daily minimum wage of 500 gourdes (about US$12.08). The fired workers--Jude Pierre, Luckner Louis, Deroy Jean Baptiste, Paul René Pierre, Jean Luvard Exavier and Rubin Mucial—are all on the executive committee of the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), a member union in the Collective of Textile Union Organizations (KOSIT), the labor alliance that led the December protests.

Division and confusion marred Dec. 16 celebrations by Haiti's Lavalas Family (FL) party in Port-au-Prince to commemorate the 23rd anniversary of the overwhelming 1990 electoral victory of the party's founder, former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004). Hundreds of FL supporters marched from the site of the St. Jean Bosco church, where Aristide served as a priest in the 1980s, to the Jean Aristide Foundation in the northeastern suburb of Tabarre. But participants reported that when party coordinator Maryse Narcisse tried to speak, she was drowned out by supporters of Senator Moïse Jean-Charles and Deputy Arnel Bélizaire, two populist members of Haiti's Parliament. Following a dispute over planning for a November demonstration, the FL executive committee announced Dec. 2 that the party "protests with all its might against any public declaration" from Jean-Charles and Bélizaire, describing them as "some people who present themselves as Lavalas Family members."

Scores of Puerto Rican teachers briefly occupied the Senate chamber in San Juan on Dec. 19 to protest legislation proposed by Gov. Alejandro García Padilla to change the retirement and pension system for the island’s teachers. After scuffling with Capitol building employees, the chanting teachers, many wearing yellow T-shirts, pushed their way into the chamber, forcing the 16 senators present to move to another room. Protests continued at the Capitol throughout the week, with teachers and police clashing outside the building on Dec. 21. Despite the actions, both chambers of the Legislative Assembly narrowly voted to pass the bill—the House of Representatives on Dec. 21 by a vote of 26 to 20 and the Senate on Dec. 23 by a vote of 14 to 13.

The New York-based nonprofit Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) announced on Jan. 6 that the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has recommended ending the group’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Founded in 1967 by the late Rev. Lucius Walker, IFCO is the first national foundation in the US controlled by people of color. It is probably best known as the sponsor of Pastors for Peace, which for the past 22 years has organized the US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, an annual shipment of humanitarian aid to Cuba; Pastors for Peace has also provided such aid for Nicaragua, Haiti and other countries.

After lying in state at the Knesset, where Israelis lined up to pay tribute, Ariel Sharon was buried Jan. 13 on his family's ranch in the Negev desert. The Israeli military deployed the Iron Dome missile shield, lest Gaza-based militants tried to target the burial with rockets. In fact, "two projectiles" did hit the nearby Shaar HaNegev region, the military said, reporting no casualties. Earlier in the day, Israeli air-strikes hit a Gaza refugee camp, ostensibly in response to prior ineffectual projectile attacks. US Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement to Israel: "Our nation shares your loss and honors Ariel Sharon's memory." News of Sharon's death set off spontaneous joyful celebrations at Lebanon's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. (Algemeiner, AFP, AFP, JP Updates)

A Saudi Arabian court on Jan. 12 sentenced to death a member of a militant cell convicted of producing explosives used in a May 2004 suicide attack on a western company operating in Saudi Arabia's northwestern port city of Yanbu. According to reports, the court also handed down sentences ranging from three to 12 years to 10 other co-defendants convicted of lesser offenses, including financing the attack and sheltering those involved. Reports indicate that the attack stemmed from a 2003 al-Qaeda initiative, which sought to interfere with relations between the US and Saudi Arabia. The accused have 30 days to appeal their sentences.

Israel's pressure on Palestinians to recognize it as a Jewish state is an attempt to legalize "racism," a PLO official said Jan. 11. PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi said defining Israel as a Jewish state would signify that any Jewish person would have the right to return to Palestine, while Palestinians would lose that right. Ashrawi told Ma'an News Agency that Israel wants to "create a narrative that denies the Palestinian presence, rights, and continuity on the historic Palestinian lands." A "Jewish state" recognition would exempt Israel from its responsibility toward the Palestinian refugees who were forcibly displaced from their homes in 1948, she said.