Claims by Indonesia authorities that the killing of West Papuan rebel leader Kelly Kwalik last month would improve security in the province's restive Timika region were dashed Jan. 24 when nine people traveling in a convoy of US mining company Freeport-McMoran were injured in an ambush. Papua police said gunmen fired at two buses and four other vehicles carrying Freeport employees and family members on the highway between the mine and Kuala Kencana town. The injured included one US and one South African national working at the Grasberg gold and copper mine, the teenage daughter of a mine employee, and four Mobile Brigade police officers. (Jakarta Globe, Jan. 25)

Votani Majola, lawyer for King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo of South Africa's AbaThembu Tribe, announced Jan. 24 that the tribal homeland—covering a vast area of the republic's territory—has seceded from the nation. "AbaThembu Tribe have seceded from South Africa," he told the press. "The sooner the nation aligns with this reality and start preparing to form the State of Thembuland the better."

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans opposed to Hugo Chávez took to the streets of Caracas Jan. 23, blaming him for numerous problems in the country, including increased electricity blackouts, water rationing, and widespread crime. The rallies coincided with the 52nd anniversary of the uprising that toppled Venezuela's last dictator (Marcos Pérez Jiménez). (AlJazeera, Jan. 23).

A German court in Nuremberg has issued an arrest warrant for Argentina's former dictator Jorge Videla for helping to cover up the death of a German citizen in 1978, at the height of the "Dirty War." The Bayern prosecutor reopened the case in December and requested an order of arrest for Videla after the remains of Rolf Stawowiok were identified through genetic testing in early 2009. The local Nuremberg court had closed the case in 2008 citing a lack of physical evidence as well as an Argentine court ruling declining to extradite Videla for the deaths of another two German citizens. Stawowiok's remains were exhumed in 2004 and were found to have evidence of torture and bullets. Argentine authorities have said that Videla will remain in prison until he has served his prior sentence.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas resigned Jan. 21 in the midst of a dispute with President Dalia Grybauskaite over secret US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons in the country. Grybauskaite has publicly said that she believes there were prisoners held in Lithuania, but Usackas has denied this. The dispute follows a parliamentary report that found that the CIA had been provided two facilities in Lithuania to interrogate al-Qaeda suspects. Usackas has maintained that no prisoners were actually held at the locations. On Jan. 20, Grybauskaite had urged Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius to dismiss Usackas because he had lost the president's confidence and trust.

The Rag Blog on Jan. 11 was among those to take note in alarmist terms ("Got Fascism?") of a suggestion by Cass Sunstein—President Obama's Harvard Law School friend and recently appointed administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs—for "cognitive infiltration" by government agents to combat the growing popularity of conspiracy theory. In a piece entitled "Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures" in the August issue of the Journal of Political Philosophy, Sunstein and co-author Adrian Vermeule write:

US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Jan. 22 that undocumented Haitians who arrived after last week's earthquake will be sent back to Haiti. While removal of undocumented Haitians already in the US before the earthquake has been put on hold, Napolitano told a news conference that Haitians should not view the earthquake as an open opportunity to migrate to the US, but remain in their country to help rebuild. She stated that "attempting to leave Haiti now will only bring more hardship to the Haitian people and nation." (Jurist, Jan. 22)

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized on Jan. 23 a US Justice Department recommendation that 47 Guantánamo Bay inmates should be held indefinitely without trial. Department officials said the men were too dangerous to release, but could not be tried due to insufficient evidence. ACLU director Anthony Romero said their detention would reduce the camp's closure to a "symbolic gesture." (BBC News, Jan. 23)