Colombia's new President Juan Manuel Santos met with his Venezuelan counterpart Hugo Chávez in a first step to restore bilateral relations Aug. 10. In a symbolically charged move, the meeting took place at the Quinta de San Pedro Alejandrino, a monument to Simón Bolívar near Santa Marta on Colombia's northern coast, where the liberator died in 1830.

A judge in Medellín acquitted ten soldiers on Aug. 6, including a colonel and major, of participation in the massacre of eight civilians at the "peace community" of San José de Apartadó in the northern Urabá region in February 2005. The case has been viewed as a critical measuring stick for the ability of the Colombian court system to render justice in the cases of thousands of killings of civilians in the country's armed conflict.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Aug. 9 issued a statement calling on governments to work to improve the human rights conditions of the world's indigenous peoples. The statement, made on the International Day of World's Indigenous People, urged world governments to come into compliance with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which was adopted by the UN in 2007. The treaty outlines the global human rights of the approximately 370 million indigenous people and bans discrimination against them.

From the Amnesty International, Aug. 10:

The Taleban and other insurgent groups should be investigated and prosecuted for war crimes, Amnesty International said, following the release of a UN report showing a rise in targeted killings of civilians in Afghanistan by anti-government fighters.

Sudanese Guantánamo Bay detainee Ibrahim Ahmed Mahmoud al-Qosi on Aug. 9 reached a plea agreement with the US government setting out the maximum sentence he can receive at his military tribunal. The details of the plea agreement will remain sealed until he is released from prison, but it is reported to limit his sentence to between 12 and 15 years. According to al-Qosi's lawyers, the government will allow him to serve his sentence at Camp 4, a facility at Guantanamo reserved for the best behaved detainees. Additionally, al-Qosi is said to have waived credit for the eight years he has spent in detention.

A total of 33 candidates met the Aug. 7 deadline for filing to run for president in Haiti's general elections, scheduled for Nov. 28. The candidacies must still be approved by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP); the decisions are to be made by Aug. 17. Among the more prominent candidates were: Jude Célestin, running for the Unity party of President René Préval; Jacques Edouard Alexis, a former prime minister in the Préval government who is now the candidate of the Movement for the Progress of Haiti (MPH); Coalition of National Progressive Democrats (RDNP) candidate Myrlande Hyppolite Manigat, a former senator and the wife of ex-president Leslie Manigat (February-June 1988); economist Leslie Voltaire of the Together We Are Strong coalition; and pastor Chavannes Jeune of the Alliance of Christians and Citizens for the Reconstruction of Haiti (ACCRHA).

On Aug. 5 Mexico's Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) upheld a law enacted in the Federal District (DF, Mexico City) last December recognizing same-sex marriages. Eight of the 11 justices voted with the majority; two opposed the marriage equality law and one was absent for reasons of health.

Local police detained a national Honduran campesino leader, Juan Ramón Chinchilla, on Aug. 4 in Copán Ruinas in the western department of Copán and held him almost 21 hours without offering a legal justification. Police stopped Chinchilla at around 11:30 AM as he was returning with friends from a wake for a relative in a nearby community; the charge was apparently riding without a seatbelt. Chinchilla's friends paid a fine for the traffic violation, but police continued to hold the campesino leader on various pretexts, such as a supposed need to wait for a deputy commissioner. They finally released him at 8 AM on Aug. 5.