A Turkish state prosecutor has launched an investigation into allegations that Israel's offensive in Gaza amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity, based on research of the Islamic-oriented human rights organization Mazlum-Der. The complaint filed by Mazlum-Der names 19 people including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, President Shimon Peres, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. "We submitted the complaint against those who we could prove were in some way responsible for giving orders for the attack on Gaza," said Mazlum-Der attorney Meryem Sari.

From The Telegraph, Jan. 28:

Benjamin Netanyahu, the favourite to win next month's Israeli general election, yesterday predicted al-Qaeda would blow up the purported burial place of Jesus Christ if the country relinquished control of Jerusalem.

Do you think he's planning something? From the NY Daily News, Feb. 4:

Former VP Dick Cheney warns of nuclear attack on United States under President Obama
WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney isn't finished scaring the bejesus out of America.

President Hugo Chávez condemned the Jan. 30 attack on Venezuela's main synagogue in a Feb. 5 statement—but warned it was being used to fan unrest ahead of a referendum next week on his bid for unlimited re-election. "They accuse me of being anti-Semitic. I don't hate Jews, and I call on all Venezuelan Jews not to let themselves be used," Chávez said during a military parade in Maracay.

Survival International has received reports that indigenous communities of the Sierra de Perijá in Venezuela are being threatened by Colombian rebels. Survival reports that members of the FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group, have been settling among Barí and Yukpa indigenous communities in the border area. The rebels bring in weapons and drugs, entice young people to their ranks, and squat on indigenous land.

A tribe of 300 hunter-gatherer nomads is fleeing from bulldozers in the Brazilian Amazon as their last forest is rapidly destroyed, Survival International reports. Around sixty members of the Awá tribe have no contact with outsiders. Survival International has launched an urgent campaign for the protection of the Awá, with one group of illegal loggers said to be only three kilometers form their community.

President Rafael Correa was condemned by Ecuador's national indigenous peoples' organization CONAIE over his policy towards uncontacted Amazon tribes Jan. 29. "Correa's regime is promoting oil production on land inhabited by uncontacted tribes," read the statement from CONAIE. The statement was made in an open letter to the World Social Forum being held in the Amazon town of Belem, Brazil, which President Correa is attending. It comes after the recent announcement by government ministers they intend to protect Ecuador's uncontacted peoples from illegal loggers.

Mexico's Federal Preventative Police announced Feb 5 the arrest of Gerónimo Gámez García, said to be the key middle-man between the Beltran Leyva criminal organization (a faction of warring Sinaloa Cartel) and Colombian cocaine suppliers. Gámez was reportedly apprehended with a million dollars in cash in the Ciudad Satélite suburb of the national capital. Eight men arrested with him reportedly included one Colombian. Federal authorities hailed it as a major blow against the cartels. (BBC News, La Jornada, Feb. 5)