BPZ Resources of Houston received a permit from Lima's Energy Ministry to build a gas plant in northern Peru near the border with Ecuador this week. The plant, to be supplied by BPZ's offshore Bloc Z-1 field, will fuel a 135-megawatt power plant after $120 million in financing is procured from the World Bank's International Finance Corp. The project is part of $10  billion in energy investment commitments expected in Peru over the next seven years, including a $3.8 billion export project by Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. (Bloomberg, Dec. 4)

Peru's President Alan García declared that his nation's long dispute with Chile was over Dec. 5 after removing his army chief Gen. Edwin Donayre, who caused outrage with an anti-Chilean tirade that surfaced on YouTube. In the video, Donayre told a social gathering: "The Chilean that enters [Peru] doesn't leave, or he leaves in a coffin; if there aren't enough coffins, they'll leave in plastic bags." Chile initially said it would accept an apology from García, but Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley later demanded Donayre's removal. Donayre defended his comments, telling local media they were made in private and "only express the feelings of every soldier who loves his homeland."

The Russian destroyer Admiral Chabanenko passed through the Panama Canal Dec. 5 following joint naval maneuvers with Venezuela. It marked the first Soviet or Russian military ship to traverse the 80-kilometer waterway since World War II. Panamanian Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis portrayed the Russian canal crossing as business as usual, saying "Here there is no other message than that the canal is open to all of the world's ships."

Another missile strike by a suspected US drone on Mir Ali village (North Waziristan) killed at least three presumed militants Dec. 5. (AFP, Dec. 5) That same day in Peshawar, a car-bomb attack on a crowded market near a Shi'ite mosque killed at least 27, including a 12-year-old boy, and wounded 100. The mosque and adjacent buildings were wrecked. The bazaar was crowded with shoppers in the run-up to the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. (AlJazeera, Dec. 6)

From the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN), Dec. 5:

ETAN Opposes Adm. Blair as Director of National Intelligence
"President-elect Barack Obama's rumored selection of Admiral Dennis C. Blair for Director of National Intelligence is unacceptable," the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) said today. "During his years as Pacific Commander, Blair actively worked to reinstate military assistance and deepen ties to Indonesia's military despite its ongoing human rights violations in East Timor and consistent record of impunity," said John M. Miller, National Coordinator of ETAN.

A group of Indian-American organizations and individuals have launched a campaign against Sonal Shah, a member of the transition team of the US president-elect Barack Obama, for her alleged links to India's Hindu fundamentalist ultra-right. Specifically, she is said to have worked in America for the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), an civic ally of the right-wing BJP opposition party that was deeply implicated in the 2002 Gujarat pogroms. The organizations are demanding that Shah to come clean on the issue. From IndiaServer, Nov. 21:

The Assyrian International News Agency reports Kurdish village leaders, in league with local bosses of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), are waging a "lawful means" campaign to confiscate the lands of the Assyrian monastery of St. Gabriel, founded in 397 CE, in the eastern Turkish city of Midyat. Timotheos Samuel Aktas, the Metropolitian of Tur Abdin, charges that the Kurdish mayors of Yayvantepe, Eglence and Çandarlı villages "falsely claimed" in a petition to judicial authorities that Mor Gabriel Monastery has illegally encroached upon village woodlands and cut oak trees. The monastery is also accused of illegally conducting missionary activity among local Muslim youth.

Thousands of people from an informal settlement 20 kilometers south of Khartoum are now living in makeshift shelters after their homes were razed by Sudan's government. Local officials said 4,000 homes were destroyed under a plan to reorganize the "Mandela" settlement, established by war refugees from the south in the '90s, to make it more habitable. Another 6,000 are slated to be demolished. "When this is over, people will move back, build and live in peace," said Madut Wek, secretary to the local government-backed Mandela Popular Committee. But speaking to the UN news agency IRIN, many evicted residents denied Wek's claims. "We were living just fine there," elderly Idriss Karama said as he watched bulldozers ploughing through the rubble of what used to be his home a few hundred yards away. "They brought us here. We don't know anything."