Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who has admitted to being Osama bin Laden's chauffeur in Afghanistan, went on trial at Guantánamo Bay July 21, in the first US war crimes trial since World War II. Hamdan pleaded not guilty to the charges before the military tribunal which could send him to life in prison. (Reuters, July 22) But in a surprise move, the presiding judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, excluded as inadmissible all statements obtained from Hamdan's interrogations in Afghanistan, except his first videotaped battlefield interrogation—in which he disclosed no links to bin Laden. "The interests of justice are not served by admitting these statements because of the highly coercive environment and conditions under which they were made," Allred wrote in a 16-page ruling. (McClatchy, July 22)

Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was detained July 21 in Serbia, government sources in Belgrade report. He has been wanted by international authorities since 1996 on genocide charges. A statement by Serbia's National Security Council, headed by President Boris Tadic, said Karadzic was arrested and handed over to the Belgrade-based Special War Crimes Court. The statement did not offer further details.

On the morning of July 17, after 16 hours of debate, Argentina's Senate rejected a law proposed by President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner to raise the tax on soy exports from 34% to 44%. The Chamber of Deputies had approved the bill earlier. The measure would have made into law a tax hike that Fernandez put into effect previously by decree. The Senate was tied over the bill until Vice President Julio Cobos, who is connected to agricultural interests, ended the impasse by voting against his own government. It was "the most difficult day of my life," he said. A number of senators from Fernandez's Justicialist Party (PJ, Peronist) also voted against the bill.

In mid-July Citgo—the US oil distributor owned by the Venezuelan state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA)—began a program to distribute compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to low- and middle-income families in Houston and Corpus Christi, Tex.; Lamont, Ill.; Lake Charles, La.; and Washington, DC. Ultimately the program is intended to supply some 460,000 of the energy-saving lightbulbs to homes in these cities and in Boston, Philadelphia, New York City, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Madison, Wisconsin.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva arrived in Bogotá on July 18 for a three-day visit to Colombia that included joining Colombian president Alvaro Uribe in the inauguration of a meeting of business leaders from the two countries. On July 19 Lula and Uribe met in the Hatogrande estate on the outskirts of the capital to sign accords on investment, the environment and biofuels, and on security along the 1,500-km border Brazil and Colombia share in the Amazon region.

On July 15 Abdallan Guzmán Cruz, a former deputy in Mexico's federal Congress, charged that unknown persons broke into his home in Morelia, Michoacán, the night of July 7 and stole papers that he had gathered during years of investigation into the disappearance of five relatives from 1974 to 1976, during the Mexican military's "dirty war" against suspected leftists. He said some books formerly considered "subversive" were also stolen, along with 60,000 pesos (about $5,900) and some rings, but other valuable objects were not touched. Guzmán Cruz is an activist in the Diego Lucero Foundation, a human rights group. Another activist from the foundation, Jose Francisco Paredes Ruiz, went missing in September 2007; no information is available on where he is now and on his physical condition.

Excavations at the ex-military barracks at the Mexican village of Atoyac, Guerrero state, to discover the remains of an estimated 470 "dirty war" victims, are expected to conclude this week. Overseen by Argentine anthropologist Claudia Bisso, the excavations were undertaken by the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) following a years of pressure from the local Association of the Families of the Detained, Disappeared and Victims of Human Rights Violations (AFADEM). AFADEM vice president Tita Radilla Martínez said other sites are being identified where excavations will be demanded. She also called for former military leaders to appear in court to reveal the whereabouts of mass graves. "If Gen. Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro is called to testify, surely he could say where the bodies of our relatives are." (La Jornada Guerrero, July 20; La Jornada, BBC, July 19)

In a letter from chancellor Jaime Bermúdez, the Colombian government formally rejected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's offer to mediate in a peace process with the FARC guerillas. The letter also objected to Ortega's reference to the FARC as "brothers," calling it "offensive to the Colombian nation to grant this kind of treatment to...a terrorist group that commits crimes against humanity." (ANMCLA, July 20)