The leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced in a Dec. 21 letter to the Colombians for Peace organization that it is planning to release six hostages unilaterally in the near future: three police agents, one soldier, former Meta governor Alan Jara and former legislative deputy Sigifredo López. The FARC said it intended to release the prisoners to opposition senator Piedad Córdoba. Right-wing president Alvaro Uribe announced on Dec. 22 that he wanted to avoid a "political spectacle" and that the hostages should be turned over to the International Red Cross. (Adital, Dec. 22)

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a US-based interfaith peace organization with an affiliate in Colombia, is charging that Colombian government agencies have intercepted more than 150 e-mail accounts of nonviolent groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, along with Colombian nongovernmental organizations. FOR says Colombia's police intelligence agency was intercepting groups' e-mail from December 2006 until as recently as November 2008. In a letter to US ambassador William Brownfield, 14 US-based groups noted that in 2006 the US State Department gave the police intelligence agency a $5 million contract to provide "internet surveillance software." "As a result," the letter says, "US taxpayers were apparently paying for Colombian agencies to spy on legitimate US and Colombian humanitarian organizations."

On Dec. 20 the government of Bolivian president Evo Morales announced that a three-year literacy campaign had concluded successfully, making Bolivia the third Latin American country to end illiteracy, after Cuba (1961) and Venezuela (2005). The government said the campaign had succeeded with 819,417 (99.5%) of the 824,101 people who had been identified as illiterate. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) considers that a country has eliminated illiteracy as a social phenomenon when the illiteracy rate falls below 3.9%. However, the correspondent from the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada reported that some of the program's graduates "scarcely learned to sign their names and recognize some letters."

On Dec. 22 the second chamber of Argentina's federal appeals court confirmed that "there is no medical examination that would justify" releasing Gen. Jorge Rafael Videla, the first president of the 1976-1983 military regime, from prison. The ruling upholds an Oct. 10 decision by federal judge Norberto Oyarbide removing Videla from house arrest and sending him to the Campo de Mayo Federal Prison under the supervision of the Federal Penitentiary Service (SPF). Videla is being held on charges that the military regime had a systematic plan to keep pregnant detainees in secret detention centers until they gave birth. The babies were then adopted by military or police families or their friends; the mothers were killed.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy and Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a $12 billion strategic partnership agreement in Rio de Janeiro on Dec. 23, the second day of Sarkozy's official visit to Brazil. The two presidents also finalized nearly a dozen other agreements, covering space, nuclear energy, climate change, biodiversity, professional training and scientific and cultural cooperation. Sarkozy currently holds the rotating presidency of the 27-member European Union (EU), and his visit included the renewal on Dec. 22 of a strategic partnership agreement between Brazil and the EU. After the two-day official visit, Sarkozy and his wife, Carla Bruni, were planning a vacation at a Brazilian resort.

Israeli air-strikes on the Gaza Strip entered a fourth day Dec. 30, with raids on a number of Hamas government buildings and security installations, as well as the Islamic University. Defense Minister Ehud Barak told the Knesset that Israel is engaged in an "all-out war with Hamas." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for an immediate ceasefire and condemned both Israel and Hamas. While recognizing Israel's right to defend itself from rocket attacks, he condemned its "excessive use of force." The death toll has surpassed 350, some 60 of them civilians, by a UN count. (BBC News, IHT, Dec. 30)

Nearly two million hectares of forest in Peru have been destroyed in order to grow coca, the country's Environment Minister Antonio Brack said in a Lima Dec. 28. "The traffickers invaded protected areas and cleared forests for land to grow coca," the minister said, adding that most of the damage has been done in the jungle regions of San Martín and Huanuco, and in the Valley of the Apurimac and Ene rivers, known as the VRAE region. Drug trafficking also hurt the environment by dumping chemicals into rivers. "The illegal trade has had a very strong impact on the environment," Brack told the official Andina news agency. "We can help restore forests and improve environmental systems in the drug zones, once they are pacified." (IANS, Dec. 29)

A Brazilian rancher suspected of orchestrating the 2005 murder of Sister Dorothy Stang, a US-born nun who spoke out against logging in the Amazon rainforest, is to be charged in the killing and brought to trial following his arrest for land fraud, prosecutors announced Dec. 28. Federal police arrested the rancher, Regivaldo Galvão, two days earlier at his home in the northern Amazon state of Pará. He was accused of trying to use forged titles to claim possession of the same public land that Sister Dorothy was fighting to protect when she was fatally shot in February 2005.