Chilean troops from the Brazilian-led United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) wounded one local man in the early morning of Nov. 10 when they opened fire on a crowd in Grand-Goâve, a town south of Port-au-Prince in the West Department, according to Haitian witnesses. Chilean Gen. Ricardo Toro Tassara said airborne troops from Chile's 514-member contingent landed during a nighttime training exercise when one of their UH-1H helicopters developed a mechanical problem. At daybreak a crowd of 200 residents gathered around the helicopter asking for food and water, Toro Tassara said, and when some came "closer than necessary," the soldiers fired into the air to disperse them.

Protests greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Brazil at the start of a South American tour Nov. 23. On Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema beach, thousands of demonstrators from groups representing gays, artists, Christians, Jews, and Holocaust survivors carried protest banners and a giant cage containing white balloons as a symbol of Iran's "repressed values." Large protests were also held in Sao Paulo. Opposition politicians also criticized the visit. "One thing is a diplomatic relationship with dictatorships, another is to welcome their leaders in your home," Jose Serra, the Sao Paulo state governor, wrote in a newspaper opinion.

The Afghan attorney general's office announced Nov. 23 that two cabinet ministers are being investigated on corruption charges. The ministers are suspected of embezzlement and are among 15 government officials currently under investigation. The announcement came a week after President Hamid Karzai vowed in his inaugural address to fight corruption. The identities of the ministers will remain unknown, pursuant to Afghan law, which prohibits the naming of suspects until a conviction is upheld by the Supreme Court. Despite last week's pledge to fight corruption, Karzai has delayed signing the necessary arrest warrants needed to begin a trial of several senior officials.

An Algerian criminal court acquitted former Guantánamo Bay detainees Abdulli Feghoul and Terari Mohamed on Nov. 22, according to the Algérie Presse Service. Feghoul and Mohamed were repatriated to Algeria in August 2008 after being held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for seven years. The Algerian state prosecutor had sought a 20-year sentence against Feghoul and Mohamed for allegedly belonging to a foreign terrorist group. Defense lawyer Farid Abbache stated that while the former detainees admitted to involvement in theft and drug trafficking, they denied any connection with terrorist groups.

A Chinese court sentenced human rights activist Huang Qi to three years in prison Nov. 23 on charges of illegally holding state secrets. Huang was a critic of the government's handling of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan province that killed about 90,000 people. After the quake, he posted articles online criticizing the government's response and talked to foreign media outlets about how some children's deaths were the result of poorly-built schools. Huang was originally detained on June 10, 2008.

On Nov. 22, at the instigation of Czech Human Rights Minister Michael Kocáb, the government of the Czech Republic expressed regret over the illegal sterilizations of women that have been performed in the country. Speaking after a cabinet session, Kocáb said a set of measures are being designed to prevent similar cases from recurring with more rigorous standards for assuring informed consent. There are currently no statistics on the number of women who have been harmed by this surgery in the Czech Republic, but activists say dozens of Romani women have undergone forced sterilizations in the Ostrava region. Several institutions have devoted attention to the issue of illegal sterilizations, including Czech ombudsman Otakar Motejl, who has received complaints from approximately 80 women, most of them Roma. (Romea, Prague, Nov. 24)

After two hours of resistance Nov. 19, some 150 troops of Panama's National Police entered the Naso indigenous community of San San Drui in Bocas del Toro province, using tear gas to allow bulldozers and other machinery of the Ganadera Bocas company to destroy several small structures at the settlement of La Trinchera. The structures had been recently rebuilt after a similar confrontation at the contested piece of land in March. Naso leaders say the police had no judicial order to carry out the eviction, but had the political support of the provincial governor, Simón Becker, and Justice Minister José Raúl Mulino. The eviction leaves some 200 people without shelter in the middle of the rainy season. Two remaining structures at the settlement were destroyed by the cattle company's machinery the following day, with the area still occupied by police troops.

A Sandinista party member was killed and an undetermined number of Liberal Party opposition followers injured in clashes between rival demonstrators on highways around Nicaragua Nov. 21. Rafael Anibal Luna Ruiz, a 42-year-old mechanic, died in the northern town of Ciudad Dario from wounds suffered when he was hit with stones thrown by opposition supporters on the highway from Matagalpa to Esteli. The Sandinistas were headed to Managua for a rally in support of President Daniel Ortega, while the Liberal supporters were returning from a rally in the capital against him.