Ramiro Rivera Gómez, vice-president of the Environmental Committee of Cabañas (CAC) and a local leader in the community struggle against the gold mining projects proposed by Pacific Rim, was assassinated on Dec. 20 in the Trinidad neighborhood of Ilobasco, in El Salvador's Cabañas department.

Indonesia's National Police announced Dec. 16 that they had shot Kelly Kwalik, leader of the Free Papua Movement. Authorities said Kwalik was killed as he resisted arrest during a police raid on a house in Timika, Papua. Five others, including a 10-year-old boy, were also arrested in the raid. Authorities charge that Kwalik was behind a 2002 ambush of a convoy of buses that killed a US national near the Freeport McMoRan gold and copper mining operation. They also claim Kwalik was behind a string of armed attacks in the Freeport area that left eight people dead, three of them foreigners, between June and November this year.

Palestinian security forces that have been detaining and apparently torturing Hamas supporters on the West Bank have been working closely with the CIA, the UK Guardian reports, citing anonymous official and diplomatic sources. The two named Palestinian agencies are the Preventive Security Organisation (PSO) and General Intelligence Service (GI). One senior western official said: "The [Central Intelligence] Agency consider them as their property, those two Palestinian services." A diplomatic source added that US influence over the agencies was so great they could be considered "an advanced arm of the war on terror."

A House committee has launched an investigation into claims that US military contractors in Afghanistan are paying the Taliban to guarantee the safety of their transportation convoys, an allegation that could mean American taxpayers are indirectly funding the insurgency that has killed more than 900 American soldiers so far.

Iran and Iraq have decided to establish an arbitration commission to clear up the conflict over an oil well in the border region. In a telephone conversation between Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Iraqi counterpart Hoshyar Zebari Dec. 19, the two sides agreed to settle border disputes. The de-escalation came one day after Iraq accused Iranian forces of seizing an oil well in Iraqi territory, and mobilized its own forces to the scene.

A group of 34 al-Qaeda militants were killed and 17 others were arrested by special operations in Abyan province, Sana'a city and Arhab district in Yemen, authorities announced Dec. 17. Warplanes reportedly carried out air-strikes against an al-Qaeda training camp in al-Ma'jala area of Abyan governorate, while safe houses were raided in Sana'a, the capital. (Yemen Observer, Dec. 17)

Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Michele M. Leonhart, the acting administrator of the DEA, announced that Oumar Issa, Harouna Toure and Idriss Abelrahman arrived in the Southern District of New York Dec. 18 to face charges of conspiracy to commit acts of "narco-terrorism" and conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. The charges stem from the defendants' alleged agreement to transport cocaine through West and North Africa with the intent to support three terrorist organizations—al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb (AQIM), and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). All three have been designated by the US Department of State as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations."

Former Khmer Rouge head of state and "Brother Number Five," Khieu Samphan, has been charged with genocide, the UN-backed Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia announced Dec. 18. Samphan is the third member of the Khmer Rouge to be charged with genocide by the war crimes tribunal this week. "Brother Number Two" Nuon Chea and former foreign minister Ieng Sary also face genocide charges—marking the first time the charge has been brought against Khmer Rouge leaders by an internationally sanctioned court. All three are accused in the deaths of thousands of members of Cambodia's Vietnamese and the Cham Muslim minorities.