The Jan. 29 general strike in France—called "Black Thursday"—was the first to hit a major industrialized nation since the start of the global financial crisis. Eight major trade unions, representing teachers, postal workers, rail workers, and other public-sector employees, along with many private-sector unions, took to the streets across the country to protest President Nicolas Sarkozy's handling of the crisis.

The Israeli human rights group Yesh Din announced Jan. 29 it is launching a campaign to help Palestinians sue the state of Israel for its use of their privately owned lands for Jewish settlement in the West Bank. The campaign follows the publication in the newspaper Ha'aretz of classified government data regarding the extent of construction in officially recognized settlements that is illegal under Israel's own laws. Violations include private and public building carried out without appropriate permits or outside of approved plans, as well as the construction of whole neighborhoods on private Palestinian lands.

Six detainees from the Guantánamo Bay military prison, including three Uighurs, are seeking refugee status in Canada with the support of Canadian sponsors. The Uighurs were last year deemed not to be unlawful enemy combatants. Lawyers for the men have said that US authorities have admitted the men were mistakenly picked up, and are ideal candidates for refugee status in Canada. They also have said that the men will face torture or even death if they are allowed to return to China.

The US has threatened to withhold intelligence cooperation with the UK if evidence is made public of the torture of a British resident at Guantánamo Bay, Britain's High Court asserted in a ruling Feb. 4. Details in the case must remain secret, judges ruled—explicitly citing US threats. Lord Justice Thomas and Justice Lloyd Jones said lawyers for the Foreign Secretary David Miliband had told them that the threat by the US still applied under President Barack Obama's administration. While noting that failure to release the evidence is contrary to the rule of law, the judges said it must remain secret or "the public of the United Kingdom would be put at risk."

Iraq's provincial elections Jan. 31 saw 4,000 women as candidates for 147 of the roughly 440 seats on provincial councils in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, and many of them will be guaranteed seats under an electoral quota system. Regardless of the votes their candidates receive, parties are required to give every third seat to a woman, according to a report by the International Crisis Group. The ultimate share of seats held by women will depend on the distribution of votes among parties, the report said. But some woman candidates quoted by the media questioned how significant the change really is.

Details are still sketchy of an inmate uprising at a privately-operated federal detention facility in West Texas Jan. 31. Reports in the US and Mexican press suggest the revolt, involving hundreds prisoners at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos erupted after complaints of poor medical treatment went unheeded. Initial accounts report the uprising spanned two days, with inmates setting fires and possibly even seizing guards' radio communication equipment. An unidentified Reeves County official earlier told El Diario de El Paso the situation was “dangerous” inside the facility managed by the Geo Group.

Two striking workers were shot dead on Jan. 29 during a confrontation with the authorities at the Mitsubishi Motors Corp (MMC) Automotriz auto factory in the Los Montones de Barcelona industrial park outside Barcelona in the eastern Venezuelan state of Anzoátegui. Strikers said state police agents fired the shots that killed Pedro Jesus Suárez Poito, an MMC employee, and Javier Marcano, who worked at the nearby Macusa auto parts factory and was present in an act of solidarity. (According to some reports Marcano was the MMC employee and Suárez worked at Macusa.) Members of the New Generation Union (Singetram) took over the factory on Jan. 12 to protest management's decision to lay off 135 contract workers. Workers had voted 863-21 at a mass assembly in favor of the occupation.

On the morning of Feb. 1 the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) released three captured police agents and one soldier to a humanitarian mission in the jungles of the southern Colombian department of Caquetá. The prisoners, all captured in 2007, were the first of six FARC detainees scheduled to be released over a period of four days. The rebel group said it would free former governor Alan Jara on Feb. 2 and former legislator Sigifredo López on Feb. 4. Jara was kidnapped on June 5, 2001; López has been held since Apr. 11, 2002.