Japan's ongoing dispute with Russia over the Kuril Islands has been heating up since November, when Dmitry Medvedev became the first Russian president to visit the contested archipelago. Medvedev's high-profile trip to Kunashir, second-largest of the four disputed islands, has sparked both a regional military build-up and a diplomatic war of words. The dispute over the islands—called the Northern Territories in Japan but seized by the Soviets in August 1945—has prevented Moscow and Tokyo from signing a treaty to officially end their World War II hostilities.

Bolivian President Evo Morales hastily left the southern mining city of Oruro on Feb. 11 after protesters angered by rising food prices and shortages jeered him and set off dynamite. Morales canceled plans to lead a march in the city commemorating an 1871 anti-colonial uprising there, and retreated back to the capital, La Paz. "The government took the decision not to respond to shameful provocations of this kind," presidential spokesman Ivan Canelas said. Protesters were especially upset about a near-doubling in the price of sugar after the government lifted subsidies. The march was led by the regional labor federation, the Departmental Workers Central (COD).

Several thousand Yemenis gathered in central Sana'a Feb. 12, calling for President Ali Abdallah Saleh to step down and follow the example of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. "After Mubarak, it's Ali's turn," chanted some of the estimated 4,000 protesters, mostly young students. Other favored chants included "Get out, Get out Ali" and "The people want the regime to fall!" Protesters briefly clashed with supporters of the ruling General People's Congress (GPC), thousands of whom occupied the city's central Tahrir Square to block anti-government demonstrators from gathering there. Many of the GPC followers were armed with clubs and knives. (Middle East Online, Feb. 12)

Up to 2,000 marched in Algiers despite a ban on demonstrations in the city Feb. 12, and briefly pushed back against police who tried to bar the march with a cordon. Police flooded the streets with troops and armored vehicles to block the march, called by the recently formed National Coordination for Change and Democracy (CNCD). "We want a second independence," leading government critics demanded in an online video. "We are the generation of rupture."

From AP, Feb. 12:

Taxi plows into crowd in San Diego
SAN DIEGO — A taxi cab driver plowed slowly into a crowd on a sidewalk in San Diego's busy Gaslamp District early Saturday, injuring more than two dozen people, police said. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that the crash occurred about 2 AM in the middle of the popular restaurant and nightclub zone, close to the city's convention center.

What authorities call a "tribal dispute" between Arabs and Turkmen over land near Iraq's oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk left three people dead and several more wounded several others Feb. 11. The incident began with a protest by Turkmen against Arabs who were building houses in the village of Basheer. (Reuters, Feb. 11) Six were killed and 22 wounded in three car bomb attacks in Kirkuk on Feb. 9, in what authorities said was an attack by Ansar al-Islam on the Kurdish militia Asayish. (NYT, Xinhua, Feb. 9)

Iraq operates secret prisons and routinely tortures prisoners to extract confessions that are used to convict them, Amnesty International said in a report released on Feb. 8. An estimated 30,000 men and women remain in custody in Iraq, some in secret facilities operated by the ministries of defense and interior, asserts the report, titled "Broken Bodies, Broken Minds." "Iraqi security forces use torture and other ill-treatment to extract 'confessions' when detainees are held incommunicado, especially in detention facilities—some secret—controlled by the Ministries of Interior and Defence," the report said.

The Pentagon announced Feb. 9 that a senior Department of Defense official has reduced the sentence of Ibrahim al-Qosi, the accused former al-Qaeda cook and accountant who pleaded guilty before a military tribunal last July to crimes of conspiracy and supporting terrorism. His sentence reduced to just two years, al-Qosi could return to his native Sudan as soon as summer of 2012, and he will serve the balance of his sentence in a minimum-security Guantanamo Bay facility until then. Unbeknownst to the 10-officer jury that sentenced him to 14 years last August, al-Qosi had struck a secret plea deal with Pentagon officials that will remain sealed until his eventual release. Under the terms of the deal, the Convening Authority for Military Commissions (CAMC), which has final review authority over military tribunal sentences, agreed to cut al-Qosi's jury sentence to the extent that it exceeded the bargained-for term. Senior CAMC overseer Bruce MacDonald had the authority to reduce al-Qosi's sentence further, but adhered to the two-year maximum term in the plea agreement.