Israel's plan to build 1,600 new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem is "dangerous" and has the potential to thwart US efforts to restart peace talks, the Palestinian Authority said March 9. The Israeli Interior Ministry's announcement came one day after it also approved 112 housing units in the Betar Illit settlement in Bethlehem—and a day after US envoy George Mitchell arrived in the region in a bid to reopen the talks. PA presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said the move could "derail negotiations and ensure the failure of US efforts before they begin."

From Human Rights Watch, March 10:

Afghanistan: Repeal Amnesty Law
Measure Brought into Force by Karzai Means Atrocities Will Go Unpunished
New York — The Afghan government should urgently act to repeal a law that provides an amnesty to perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today.

In a surprise move, Mauritania's Constitutional Council on March 4 rejected 10 articles of an anti-terrorism law passed by country's parliament in January. The 10 articles that were thrown out as unconstitutional would have allowed tapping of telephone calls and e-mail, as well as warrantless home searches and night raids on houses at any time. Other articles would have allowed the incarceration of minors, extended the period of "preventive detention" by the police to four years and barred any challenge to terrorism charges made by police.

UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism Martin Scheinin on March 9 urged the Obama administration to hold civilian trials for accused 9-11 conspirators, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Scheinin called the military commissions system "fatally flawed" and said that reforming the system would not help. Meanwhile, UN Special Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak also argued that the suspects should face a civilian trial.

About 100 Canadian soldiers were scheduled to leave Haiti on March 7 and return to the Valcartier base northwest of Quebec city. An 850-member force deployed to the Port-au-Prince area from the base after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti on Jan. 12. The Canadians indicated that they were planning to withdraw the rest of the troops gradually, but Canadian defense minister Peter MacKay, who was in Haiti on March 7 during a two-day visit, said his government would be doubling the size of its contingent in the 9,000-member United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which has occupied the country since June 2004. (Radio Métropole, Haiti, March 7)

After lengthy negotiations on Feb. 26, Guatemala's new education minister, Dennis Alonzo, and Joviel Acevedo, head of the 80,000-member National Teachers Assembly (ANM), reached an agreement settling a wage dispute that had set off a series of militant actions starting Feb. 22. Thousands of teachers tied up traffic throughout the country and occupied a central plaza in Guatemala City to push their demand for a 16% pay increase this year, including an 8% raise the government had failed to provide in 2009.

On the morning of March 1 members of Bogotá's Small Transport Providers Association (APETRANS), which represents about 90% of the Colombian capital's transport owners and workers, pulled some 16,400 buses and collective taxis out of service in a dispute with Mayor Samuel Moreno Rojas over his plans for modernizing the city's public transportation. Bogotá residents used trucks, bicycles and even vehicles drawn by animals to get to work and school in what most observers described as "chaos." On March 3 Mayor Moreno ordered the closing of public schools to relieve the congestion caused by the strike and authorized the sharing of individual taxis and other alternative transportation methods. He also sent 500 extra police agents to the streets in collaboration with the army's 13th Brigade.

A confrontation on March 3 between police agents and market vendors in Piura, capital of Peru's northwestern Piura province, resulted in the deaths of at least five civilians, according to the authorities; 95 civilians and 25 agents were injured in the incident, and 137 people were arrested. The vendors were protesting Piura mayor Mónica Zapata's plan to remove them from their current location in the Modelo Market to a new market area that they considered inadequate.