Tunisia's Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali announced that he will dissolve the Islamist-led administration and form a new "technocrat government" as protests rocked the country Feb. 6 following the slaying of opposition leader Chokri Belaid. The headquarters of the Ennahda party, which rules in a fractious coalition with secularists, was set ablaze as Belaid's body was taken by ambulance through Tunis from the hospital where he died. Police fired tear-gas on some 20,000 protesters at the Interior Ministry, who chanted for the fall of the government. Despite calls for calm from the administration, thousands also took to the streets in Mahdia, Sousse, Monastir and Sidi Bouzid—the cradle of the revolution, where police fired tear-gas and warning shots as protesters set cars and a police station on fire.

The International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh (ICTB) on Feb. 5 handed down its second verdict, sentencing Abdul Quader Mollah, leader of the Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), to life in prison. This sentence comes a week after televangelist Abul Kalam Azad, also known as "Bachchu Razakar," was sentenced to death. Both were indicted for crimes committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

A Somali court on Feb. 5 sentenced a woman who accused Somali security forces of rape to a year in prison for insulting a government body and making false claims. The same court in Mogadishu also sentenced freelance reporter Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim, who interviewed the woman in January, to a year in prison on the same charges. Both sentences have been criticized by human rights groups. Human Rights Watch (HRW) condemned the charges as "politically motivated" and "a mockery of the new Somali government's priorities."

As of Feb. 2 rescue workers had found the bodies of 34 people killed in an explosion the afternoon of Jan. 31 at the Mexico City headquarters of Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the giant state-owned oil monopoly, according to government officials. At least 101 other people were injured in the massive blast, which damaged part of the B2 administrative building, next to the company's main building, a 52-story tower that dominates the city's skyline. Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto declared three days of national mourning, which coincided with a long holiday weekend; the Constitution Day holiday falls on the first Monday of February.

Thousands of laid-off Mexico City electrical workers suffered a major setback on Jan. 30 when a panel of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) overturned a lower court decision supporting the workers' claim to jobs at the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE). Lawyers for the workers' union, the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME), had argued that the workers were entitled to replacement jobs at the CFE because the decision by former president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa (2006-2012) in October 2009 to close down their employer--the Central Light and Power Company (LFC), which serviced the Mexico City metropolitan area—was unjustified. The federal government owned LFC before its closing, and the government continues to own and operate the CFE.

The government of the western Argentine province of San Juan released a report the week of Jan. 28 finding that two controversial mines owned by the Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation have no "potential or actual environmental impact on glaciers or peri-glaciers in the areas" surrounding them. The Argentine branch of the environmental group Greenpeace had charged in July 2011 that Barrick's Pascua Lama and Veladero mines were damaging three small glaciers, in violation of a 2010 federal law meant to protect Andean glaciers. Barrick challenged the law, but the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice made a July 2012 ruling that left the law in effect for the time being.

The first opinion poll relating to this year's Nov. 10 general elections in Honduras, released on Jan. 29, showed Xiomara Castro, the presidential candidate of the newly formed center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), slightly ahead with 25% of voter preferences. She was followed by National Congress president Juan Orlando Hernández, the candidate of the rightwing governing National Party (PN), with 23% and Mauricio Villeda of the center-right Liberal Party (PL) with 16%. The sampling, carried out by Cid Gallup firm Jan. 14-18 with responses from 1,256 likely voters, was published by the San Pedro Sula daily La Prensa.

Guatemalan civil organizations held a protest in Guatemala City on Jan. 29 as the opening of an international campaign to demand that the government of President Otto Pérez Molina provide land for 769 indigenous campesino families that were expelled from their fields in the Polochic Valley in the northeastern Guatemalan department of Alta Verapaz in March 2011. The campaign—led by Intermón Oxfam, a Spanish group affiliated with the relief organization Oxfam International—is being carried out in Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Spain.