Saying that "our ideals give us the strength and moral high ground" to fight terrorism, President Barack Obama signed executive orders Jan. 22 ending the CIA's secret overseas prisons, banning coercive interrogation methods, and closing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp within a year.

A deported Mexican woman who took sanctuary in a Chicago church to highlight immigrants' rights is asking President Barack Obama to call a halt to immigration raids. Elvira Arellano says she is hopeful that Obama will help pass an immigration reform that stops dividing families. She spoke to reporters outside the US Embassy in Mexico City, where she gave officials a letter asking Obama to sign an executive order stopping the raids and deportations. (AP, Jan. 22)

Thousands of protestors in India marched against British mining firm Vedanta on Jan. 18 to oppose the company's plans to mine a sacred mountain and feed its aluminium refinery. Reports suggest that up to 7,000 demonstrators marched to the gates of the refinery, destroying some of the Vedanta branded sign boards which litter the Niyamgiri area of Orissa state. The protestors included hundreds of Dongria Kondh tribespeople, other Kondh tribal groups, farmers and day laborers.

From WPIX-NY, Jan. 22:

Child Killed in Chinatown After Van Jumps Curb
One child is dead and at least four or five others have been injured after a catering van belonging to China Chalet jumped the curb in Chinatown striking the children.

On Jan. 18, Salvadorans went to the polls to elect 262 mayors, one for every municipality in the country, as well as 84 deputies in the national assembly. After a tense day of voting and claims of violence and intimidation, both the leftist FMLN and the right-wing ARENA celebrated victories—the FMLN winning the most seats in the legislative assembly and ARENA taking the government of the capital San Salvador. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal has yet to verify the results.

Two police officers were killed and four were seriously injured while evicting hundreds of peasant families from Bosque de Pómac nature preserve in northern Peru's Lambayeque region Jan. 20. Authorities said the peasants had been illegally occupying the reserve for more than a year, but advocates for the evicted families said many had been fraudulently been sold lands within the reserve and believed that they held legal title.

On Jan. 20, nation-wide protests over large-scale metal mining called by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) brought out some 12,000 people from indigenous, campesino, environmentalist and human rights organizations across eleven provinces of the small Andean nation. Although large-scale metal exploration has been ongoing since the early '90s, no project has yet reached production. Mining activities are currently suspended until a new law is passed.

With a short memo on Inauguration Day, President Barack Obama blocked plans to loosen some air quality standards and to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list. But he did not stop several other controversial, late-term environmental regulations issued by the Bush administration, including a weakening of the Endangered Species Act, a first step in opening Western lands to oil shale development, leases for oil and gas drilling near some national parks, and the start of a process to allow new oil rigs off the Atlantic, Gulf, Alaska and California coasts. (LAT, Jan. 22)