North Korea's leadership is moving efficiently to portray Kim Jong-un, chosen heir of his late father, as the country's unchallenged ruler, with state TV repeatedly broadcasting images of senior military leaders pledging fealty to the son. The military is on alert amid a choreographed spectacle of thousands of mourners filling the cold streets of Pyongyang. The border with China—North Korea's only real link to the outside world—has been sealed. While the order for the military alert was officially issued by Kim Jong-un, it is expected that the top generals will actually rule as a sort of regency in the transition period. (Kim Jong-il himself, selected as Kim Il-sung's successor in the 1970s, did not officially assume power until three years after the death of his father in 1994. Kim Jong-il's leadership saw the most difficult times in North Korea since the Korean War, with a great famine known in the North as the "arduous march" claiming perhaps 2 million lives in the mid-1990s.) Some observers point to Kim Jong-un's uncle Jang Song-thaek as a "technocrat" who will wield real power in the transition—and perhaps seek to open the country. Inevitably drawing a comparison to Deng Xiaoping, it is pointed out he was purged in 2004 only to be restored to the ruling elite 18 months later—and to become the key figure in the de facto caretaker government after Kim Jong-il first suffered a serious stroke in August 2008. (NYT, NYT, WSJ, Dec. 21; National Post, Dec. 20; Korea Policy Institute, Dec. 19)

Even as villagers at Wukan in China's Guangdong province announced an agreement to negotiate with authorities and began dismantling their barricades after a 10-day stand-off on Dec. 20, clashes were reported between security forces and thousands of protesting residents at Haimen, an industrial city about 100 kilometers up the coast in Shantou prefecture. The protests were sparked by plans to build a coal-burning power plant in an area where numerous factories have already polluted local waters and harmed the fishing economy. Protesters reportedly surrounded a government building and blocked an expressway before police used tear-gas and batons to clear them. Online accounts of the incident said hundreds were savagely beaten, and that two people were killed. Authorities denied any deaths in the incident. (FT, Reuters, McClatchy, Dec. 21; AGI, Dec. 20)

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Dec. 19 condemned the brutal crackdown on protesters by military and security forces in Cairo. Since Friday the 16th, the suppression of demonstrations has led to 11 deaths and more than 500 injuries. This is the second time since November that Pillay has condemned the use of excessive violence in Egypt. In November she issued a statement denouncing the deaths of 30 protesters at the hands of security and military forces. She expressed particularly strong concern over what seems to be a deliberate targeting of peaceful women protesters.

The Reuters account on the latest highly specious "terrorism" conviction—of US citizen Tarek Mehanna—predictably leads with a sentence that portrays providential federal action against an imminent threat: "A jury on Tuesday found a Massachusetts man guilty of conspiring to support al Qaeda by translating Arabic messages and traveling to Yemen for terrorism training." You have to read several paragraphs in to find out that things weren't nearly so dire. Prosecutors "said he traveled to Yemen in 2004 to seek terrorism training, but never received it, and had planned to travel to Iraq to fight US troops." Emphasis added. Did you catch that? He never actually received any terrorism training. And that translation of "Arabic messages"—secret documents containing orders to launch an attack? Nope. Prosecutors "said he translated videos and texts from Arabic to English and distributed them online to further al Qaeda's cause." In other words, propaganda videos. Is this what constitutes "providing and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists" these days? And can anyone explain to us why this does not violate the First Amendment?

A member of the Philippine parliament blamed unbridled large-scale mining and logging activities in Northern Mindanao region behind the devastating floods that have left nearly 1,000 dead and hundreds missing. Said congressman Rafael Mariano of Anakpawis party: "This is a disaster waiting to happen... Mining corporations are highly accountable for the serious environmental degradation and deforestation in the region and other parts of the country." According to the Manila-based Center for Environmental Concerns, forest cover in the Philippines is down to an estimated 6% of the original, and is further threatened by an average 157,400 hectares lost to deforestation per year.

After a three-day delay, Peruvian authorities finally allowed US citizen Lori Berenson to leave Lima on Dec. 19 for a brief visit to her family in New York. A court had ruled earlier in the month that she could visit the US with her young son until Jan. 11; Berenson has been living in Lima on parole since May 2010 after serving almost 15 years of a 20-year sentence for collaborating with the leftist rebels of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA). Berenson's first attempt to leave was blocked by immigration authorities at the Lima airport on Dec. 16, repeating a pattern of harassment and judicial irregularities that have marked her case since she was arrested in 1995. (AP, Dec. 20)

Hundreds of Dominicans of Haitian origin demonstrated near the Supreme Court of Justice building in Santo Domingo on Dec. 8 to protest a court ruling a week earlier supporting a 2007 claim by the Central Electoral Council (JCE) that it can invalidate the citizenship of people born in the country if it believes their parents were undocumented immigrants. Jenny Morón, a spokesperson for the protesters, said some 4,000 Dominicans were now in a "process of denationalization" because the JCE had decided to revoke their citizenship.

According to a report by the Haitian organization National Human Rights Defense Network (RNDDH), Brazilian soldiers from the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) detained two water delivery workers and a friend in Port-au-Prince in the early morning of Dec. 14 without cause, robbing them and beating them repeatedly. MINUSTAH is a Brazilian-led military and police operation with more than 10,000 members that was sent to Haiti in June 2004 ostensibly to maintain peace between political factions and to control gang violence.