The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments Feb. 23 in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, on whether a federal law that prohibits providing material support to terrorism violates the First Amendment. The challenge was filed by the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) on behalf on several groups that wanted to support Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and Sri Lanka's Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), both of which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the US government.

Pakistani authorities are reported to have arrested nearly half of the Afghan Taliban's top leadership in recent days, in what is being portrayed as a crucial blow to the insurgent movement. In total, seven of the insurgent group's 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, have been apprehended in the past week, unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials told the Christian Science Monitor.

Two human rights groups released documents Feb. 22 confirming that planes associated with the US Central Intelligence Agency's "extraordinary rendition" program landed in Poland on six occasions in 2003. The Open Society Justice Initiative and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights released flight records obtained through a freedom of information act request to the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency. Those records confirm at least six plane landings linked to the CIA at the Szczytno-Szymany airport in northern Poland between February and September 2003. The flights' origins included Afghanistan and Morocco.

The man accused of killing New York independent journalist Brad Will was released from prison in Oaxaca, Mexico, on Feb. 18 after a federal appeals tribunal declared that there was no evidence against him. Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno, an activist with the Popular Assembly of the People's of Oaxaca (APPO) from an impoverished neighborhood of Oaxaca City, was freed after 16 months in the state's harsh Santa María Ixcotel Central Penitentiary. "It was easier to implicate somebody like me than the real killers," he told reporters.

Hooded gunmen stormed the pueblo of San Vicente Camalote in southern Mexico's Oaxaca state and killed 13 people Feb. 24. Among the dead were nine state police agents who were attacked at a checkpoint. The gunmen next burst into the ranch of Alfonso Maciel, killing him and his three sons, one of whom was a minor, state authorities said. The pueblo, in Acatlán de Pérez Figueroa municipality in a mountainous region near the Veracruz border, has been occupied by army troops and elite Federal Preventative Police. (AP, El Universal, Feb. 24)

The Israeli government's decision to include two West Bank locations—the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb—on a list of "national heritage sites" has sparked an uproar in the country's political circles. Chaim Oron, chairman of the left-wing Meretz party, slammed the decision Feb. 21, saying "This is another attempt to blur the borders between the State of Israel and the occupied territories."

Despite good intentions, the push to privatize government functions and instate "free trade" policies has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a sparked a hunger crisis for millions of people in African nations, researchers conclude in a new study. Market reforms that began in the mid-1980s and were supposed to aid economic growth have actually backfired in some of the world's poorest nations, leading in recent years to multiple food riots, scientists reported Feb. 15 today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A criminal court in Algeria Feb. 21 acquitted former Guantánamo Bay detainee Mustafa Hemlili of charges of counterfeiting and affiliation with a militant group. Hemlili was released from Guantánamo, along with fellow inmate Hederbash Sufian, after a six-year detention period. The court separated the trials of the two defendants, stating that the only link between them was the date of their release. Sufian's trial was postponed due to poor health after his lawyers presented evidence showing that he suffers from mental trauma as a result of his treatment at the US naval facility. Hemlili had traveled with family members to Mali, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan without a passport before going to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region to work with an international relief agency assisting Afghan refugees. After the 9-11 attacks, Hemlili was captured in Peshawar, Pakistan, with a forged Iraqi passport. (Jurist, Feb. 22)