Two weeks after Rio de Janeiro celebrated winning the 2016 Olympic Games, the Brazilian city was rocked by an intense gun battle that left 12 dead, including two police, in one of the northern favelas, and a Military Police helicopter was shot down, killing two officers. The violence began early Oct. 17, when Morro dos Macacos favela, controlled by the Amigos dos Amigos drug gang, was invaded by members of the rival Comando Vermelho. Both sides then turned against the police who were sent in to intervene. Ironically, the violence took place near a football field known as the Vila Olímpica. Fighting quickly spread to the neighboring favelas of Sampaio and Vila Isabel, where numerous buses were torched in protest of the police invasion. The conflicted favelas have since been flooded with hundreds of Military Police. (BBC News, Jornal de Brasília, Oct. 18; The Guardian; Jornal do Commercio, Recife; eBand, Brazil, Oct. 17)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said Oct. 17 that Iran is helping his country explore for uranium. "We're working with several countries, with Iran, with Russia," Chavez told reporters during a visit to Bolivia. But he emphasized that Venezuela is taking the lead in the exploration: "We're responsible for what we're doing, we're in control." He also insisted that Venezuela would only use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes: "What we propose is for nuclear bombs to be eliminated. Venezuela will never build a nuclear bomb." (Reuters, Oct. 17)

On Oct. 16, 22 students were arrested on the National University campus in Bogotá after they detained the university rector for five hours during a demonstration. Some 300 students were protesting lack of funds for the public university. During the protest, the rector was surrounded by students and held while attempting to leave the campus. The arrests came after President Alvaro Uribe ordered anti-riot police into the campus. Seven of the detained were released for being minors. Uribe called on prosecutors to charge the students with kidnapping. (Colombia Reports, Oct. 17)

Colombia's top prosecutorial office, the Fiscalía General, ordered the detention of army lieutenant Alberto Williams Echeverry as the presumed author of the Aug. 9, 2006 massacre of five members of the Awá indigenous people at Ricaurte, Nariño department. Investigators from the Fiscalía's human rights department found that the killings were "false positives"—slain civilians reported as guerillas killed in battle. Other army personnel are said to be under investigation in the incident. (RCN Radio, Colombia, Oct. 17)

The Sunni resistance movement Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, took credit for a car bomb that killed two senior commanders of Iran's Revolutionary Guards and 27 other officers in a suicide attack in Pishin, Sistan-Baluchistan province. The blast targetted a meeting of Revolutionary Guards commanders and local tribal leaders.

Israel is planning military attacks on Iran after December, the French magazine Le Canard Enchainé asserted Oct. 13. According to the report, quoted by Israel Radio, Jerusalem has already ordered from a French food manufacturer combat rations for soldiers serving in elite units, and asked reservists of these units staying abroad to return to Israel. The report also states that in a recent visit to France, IDF Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi told his French counterpart Jean-Louis Georgelin that Israel is not planning to bomb Iran, but may send elite units to conduct ground operations there. The magazine suggests these may involve sabotage of nuclear facilities and assassinations of Iran's top nuclear scientists. (ANI, Oct. 15)

Three recent New York Times stories note a series of new pipelines either under construction or in planning by Russia, China and Iran—which together point to the emergence of a new Eurasian bloc in opposition to Western designs on the supercontinent's hydrocarbon resources. An Oct. 13 story, "Russia Gas Pipeline Heightens East Europe's Fears," noted that the new Nord Stream pipeline, passing under the Baltic Sea to Germany, will allow Russia to cut off natural gas supplies to its former satellites while still maintaining the flow to Western Europe. "Yesterday tanks, today oil," said Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, former head of Poland's security service.

Barack Obama's move to defer a meeting with the Dalai Lama during his visit to Washington DC is being criticized as a "retreat" on human rights issues, with the president being accused of caving to Chinese pressure ahead of a Sino-US summit in Beijing next month. (India Journal, Oct. 15) Chinese authorities have meanwhile protested a visit by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to a Himalayan enclave in the state of Arunachal Pradesh claimed as Chinese territory. "China expresses its strong dissatisfaction on the visit by the Indian leader to the disputed area in disregard of China's grave concerns," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.