Police found two severed heads and the bullet-ridden bodies of two women and a disabled man in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juárez Jan. 9. The body of the man, whose legs had earlier been surgically removed, was mutilated and left with a "narco-message." (AP, Jan. 9) On Jan. 8 in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, the body of Hugo Hernández, 36, was left on the street in seven pieces with a note addressed to the Juárez Cartel reading: "Happy New Year, because this will be your last." Hernandez's face was skinned and stitched onto a soccer ball. (AP, Jan. 8) On Jan. 7, a shoot-out at a military check-point in La Piedad, Michoacán, left one soldier and three presumed narco-gunmen dead. (Cambio de Michoacán, Jan. 7)

Israel has been conducting tests of a short-range missile-defense system to fend off rockets from the Gaza Strip, dubbed the "Iron Dome," and says the system is nearly ready to be deployed. (UPI, Jan. 8) The announcement comes as the Israeli Defense Forces launched four air-strikes on the Gaza Strip, targeting a supposed weapons shop and two smuggling tunnels, killing at least three. (CNN, Jan. 8)

Four were killed Jan. 9 in a presumed US drone strike on the village of Ismail Khan in the Dattakhel area of North Waziristan. (CNN, Jan. 9) The attack came hours after Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani again voiced official objection to the ongoing US drone strikes on Pakistan's territory. (Reuters, Jan. 9)

At least five protesters arrested in Iran during last week's protests will be tried on charges of "enmity against God," which carries an automatic death sentence if they are convicted. In another sign of an intensified crackdown on dissidents, a Kurdish activist, Fasih Yasamani, 28, was executed Jan. 6 by hanging at Khoy prison in Azarbaijan province, on charges of "enmity against God" and membership in the Kurdish separatist group PJAK, according to the opposition Human Rights Activists News Agency. If true, he was the second Kurdish activist executed in Iran in recent months, following the November execution of Ehsan Fattahian. At least 17 other activists are on death row.

A 20-hour gun battle at a hotel seized by militants who had earlier killed an officer at a police checkpoint in Srinagar, Indian-controlled Kashmir, ended Jan. 7 after police killed two militants, including a Pakistani citizen. A police officer and a civilian were killed, and 10 others wounded. Jammu and Kashmir authorities said both militants belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistan-based terrorist group that has been blamed for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. Other sources said Jamait-ul-Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the initial attack. (NYT, AlJazeera, Jan. 8)

Police in Russia's south killed two suspected militants Jan. 7 in a "counter-terrorism operation" launched in response to a checkpoint suicide attack that took the lives of six officers. The area on the outskirts of Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, has been under curfew since the attack. Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, all predominantly Muslim republics in the North Caucasus, saw a sharp rise in violence last year, with near-daily attacks mostly targeting police and other officials. The violence sweeping the impoverished southern region is increasingly described as a civil war between Kremlin-supported administrations and Islamic militants. (AP, Jan. 7) A Dec. 18 suicide car attack on a group of police and soldiers in Nazran, Ingushetia, wounded at least 23 people, including civilians. (AP, Dec. 18)

Last year's Israeli bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip has left a high concentration of toxic metals in the soil, according to a study by the New Weapons Research Committee (NWRC), an Italy-based group of academics, physicians and researchers. Those metals can cause tumurs and problems with fertility, and can have serious effects on newly born babies, including deformities and genetic pathologies. The metals are in particular tungsten, mercury, molybdenum, cadmium and cobalt.

The suicide bombing that killed seven CIA operatives and one Jordanian intelligence official in Afghanistan last week sheds light on secretive partnerships the US has forged in its shadow war against al-Qaeda. Jordan has evidently been involved in supporting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, despite the unpopularity of both wars among Arabs. The death of Jordanian Army Capt. Sharif Ali bin Zeid, a distant relative of Jordan's King Abdullah II, alongside CIA operatives—and the fact that the attacker was apparently Jordanian double agent—has brought at elements of this partnership into the open. The suspected bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, was a Jordanian informant who CIA and Jordanian intelligence officials hoped would lead them to al-Qaeda's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri. The blast was the worst loss of life for the CIA since the Beirut embassy bombing of 1983. (CSM, Jan. 6)