China and Colombia are planning to build a railway linking the South American country's Atlantic and Pacific coasts, President Juan Manuel Santos announced Feb. 14. Chinese ambassador Gao Zhengyue said his government sees Colombia as its chief port of entry to Latin America. The planned 138-mile long rail line will run from the port of Cupica on the Pacific to the Gulf of Urabá on the Caribbean, then continuing along the coast to a new port to be built near Cartagena.

A judge for the Provincial Court of Sucumbios in Ecuador ordered US oil company Chevron to pay $8.6 billion in damages, finding that Texaco, which was acquired by Chevron in 2001, polluted large areas of the country's rain forest. Chevron vowed to fight the ruling, calling it "illegitimate and unenforceable" and "the product of fraud." The plaintiffs' lawyer said he also plans to appeal, after the court awarded far less than the $113 billion for which the plaintiffs reportedly asked. It is unclear when, if ever, the Chevron will pay the judgment. Chevron has no assets in Ecuador, and it recently won rulings from a panel of arbitrators at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague and a judgment in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York temporarily barring the enforcement of any judgment against Chevron.

Sudanese Guantánamo Bay detainee Noor Uthman Mohammed pleaded guilty before a military tribunal Feb. 16 to terrorism charges. Mohammed entered guilty pleas to one count of providing material support of terrorism and one count of conspiracy. The charges against him stem from supposed meetings with al-Qaeda and his service as a weapons instructor and manager at the Khaden military camp in Afghanistan, where hijackers and other members of al-Qaeda trained prior to the 9-11 attacks. Mohammed was charged in May 2008 and has been detained at Guantánamo since his capture in Pakistan in 2002. Prior to the plea agreement, the details of which have not been released, Mohammed faced life in prison if convicted. A jury, consisting of at least five US military officers will now be chosen to issue a sentence in the hearing, set to begin this week.

Hundreds of protesters clashed with police and government supporters the night of Feb. 15 in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, after human rights lawyer Fathi Tarbel was arrested. Police used water cannon and teargas against what began as a protest begun by relatives of prisoners killed in a 1996 massacre who were demanding the release of the lawyer. Opposition supporters have called for a nationwide "day of rage" on Feb. 17. Several journalists and longtime dissident Idris al-Mismari are reported detained. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were all briefly blocked, as were AlJazeera and al-Arabiya television. State TV showed crowds of pro-government supporters shouting slogans in Tripoli's Green Square. Reports of two killed in the street fighting could not be confirmed. (The Guardian, Feb. 16)

On Feb. 7 Haiti's Immigration and Emigration Service issued a diplomatic passport for former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996, 2001-2004), who has lived in exile in South Africa since he was forced from office in 2004. The passport is good for five years, with an expiration date of Feb. 6, 2016. Aristide's US lawyer, Ira Kurzban, arrived in Haiti several days earlier to pick up the document for his client. (Radio Kiskeya, Haiti, Feb. 7)

Some 100 members of Los Zetas, a Mexican drug gang, had settled in the north central Guatemalan city of Cobán, capital of Alta Verapaz department, by early 2009 and were enjoying protection from "corrupt" police who were reportedly "allied with traffickers," according to a Feb. 6, 2009 confidential diplomatic cable by US ambassador Stephen McFarland. The cable was one of about 3,000 US diplomatic cables from the WikiLeaks organization that were given to the Mexican daily La Jornada because they dealt with issues relating to Mexico. The Los Zetas gang grew out of a group of Mexican Special Forces soldiers, some of them reportedly trained in counterinsurgency by the US military.

The left-of-center Mexican daily La Jornada announced on Feb. 10 that it had received some 3,000 US diplomatic cables from Sunshine Press Productions, which is presided over by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The cables deal with Mexican issues and provide "a window on the background and the tone of the bilateral relation between Mexico and the US," La Jornada's editors wrote. The paper said it "has taken on the task of reading, systematizing and treating [the material] journalistically." (LJ, Feb. 10)

Friends of the Women of Juárez, an organization based in Las Cruces, New Mexico, has written US Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano to call for the release of three-year-old Mexican national Heidi Barraza Frayre and her uncle, Juan Manuel Frayre, to the care of relatives in El Paso, Texas. The granddaughter of slain Mexican activist Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, Heidi Frayre is in US custody while the government investigates whether her El Paso relatives will be able to care for her. She has been staying in a Houston shelter for immigrant children run by a Catholic charity. Juan Manuel Frayre, one of Escobedo's sons, is in immigration detention in Chaparral, New México.