The Obama administration has delayed release of its new Nuclear Posture Review to at least the end of March, but anonymous officials widely quoted in the media say it will call for "dramatic reductions" in the US nuclear arsenal. Release of the NPR was originally slated for December, and the repeated postponements have sparked much speculation on possible meaningful steps towards the nuclear-free world that Obama set forth as a goal in his Prague speech last April. However, anonymous officials (almost certainly being authorized by the White House to float trial balloons to the press) also say the administration has ruled out pledging that the US will never initiate a nuclear first strike. (BBC News, AlJazeera, March 2; Global Security Newswire, March 1; NYT, Feb. 28)

The US Supreme Court on March 1 ordered a lower court to reconsider the case of five Chinese Muslim Uighurs detained at Guantánamo Bay. The court originally granted certiorari in Kiyemba v. Obama to determine whether it is within the power of the judicial branch to order the release of detainees into the US. The court ordered the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reconsider the case in light of the fact that each of the remaining Uighurs has received an offer of resettlement by another country.

The Federal Court of Australia ruled Feb. 26 that former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mamdouh Habib can sue the Australian government for complicity in his ill-treatment while incarcerated in Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo. Habib claims he suffered sleep deprivation, electrocution, and drug injections during his detainment, some of which happened in collusion with or in the presence of Australian officials.

Doctors in the Iraq city of Fallujah are reporting an unusually high amount of birth defects in the region, with many medical professionals saying the weapons used by US forces in the intense 2004 fighting are to blame. Heart and nervous system defects among newborn babies is said to have soared in the city in the years since the fighting, now at levels 13 times those of Europe. Doctors and parents interviewed by BBC say they believe toxic materials left over from the 2004 fighting entered the water supply in Fallujah. One doctor says medical officials note two or three cases of birth defects each day, and are urging local women not to have children.

Guatemalan union leaders and their families filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan against Coca-Cola Co., accusing the world's biggest beverage company of complicity in violence against labor leaders. Lead plaintiff José Armando Palacios says he was repeatedly targeted in attempts on his life after he joined the union at a Coca-Cola processing plaint in Guatemala City, owned by Industria de Cafe or Incasa, in 2004. Thugs he charges were hired by Coke invaded his home, held his wife and family at gunpoint, and threatened to shoot them. Palacios fled to the United States in 2006, where he was later joined by his family.

Guatemalan police forces, together with army troops and DEA agents, destroyed 319 million opium plants and 250,000 marijuana plants, together valued at an estimated $780 million, in a four-day operation last month in Ixiguan and Tajumulco municipalities of San Marcos department, near the border with Mexico. The National Civil Police said San Marcos is considered to be a "sanctuary" of opium cultivation. (EFE, Feb. 5)

Guatemalan authorities March 2 arrested three top anti-narcotics officials—days before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is due to visit the Central American nation to discuss Drug War strategy. Baltázar Gómez Barrios, chief of the National Civil Police (PNC), was detained along with "Drug Czar" Nelly Judith Bonilla and her advisor Fernando Carrillo at the Division of Anti-Narcotics Analysis and Information (DAIA). They are accused of running a corruption ring linked to a gun-battle last April between traffickers and police over a 700-kilo consignment of confiscated cocaine in Amatitlán. Five DAIA agents were killed in the gun-fight, and 13 have been since been arrested in connection with it. (NYT, FT,* Siglo XX1, Guatemala, March 3; El Periodico, Guatemala, March 2)

The Latin America and Caribbean Unity Summit, a two-day meeting of 32 regional leaders in Cancún, Mexico, ended on Feb. 23 with an agreement that included the formation of a new hemispheric organization, provisionally named the "Community of Latin American and Caribbean States." The leaders made plans for further meetings, in Venezuela in July 2011 and in Chile in 2012, to continue discussing the mechanics of the new group and to establish its final name.