On Feb. 7 the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Puerto Rican independence activist Avelino Gonzalez Claudio, a suspected leader of the rebel Popular Boricua Army (EPB)-Macheteros. According to Luis Fraticelli, who heads the FBI in Puerto Rico, the arrest was carried out without incidents in the northern town of Manati. "We don't know what condition our companero is in at this point," Alvin Couto, an attorney and spokesperson for the Socialist Front of Puerto Rico, said on Feb. 10.

Local residents burned tires and blocked roads around Cuzco, Peru, Feb. 7 to protest government proposals to expand private development at Machu Picchu and other tourism sites. Tourist access to Machu Picchu was cut off by the protests, with visitors transported out in police vehicles. Further such actions are pledged if Peru's congress does not reject two proposed laws to ease construction restrictions in Cuzco department and allow for more hotels to be built near archaeological sites. (AP, Feb. 9)

Local schoolteacher Felipe Hernández Yuena was detained Feb. 5 in the municipal government building at Venustiano Carranza, a conflicted town in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, accused of "sedition and riot." Showing bruises on his face, arms and abdomen, Hernández Yuena said that while in custody he was beaten and tortured by masked men he believed were from military intelligence, who questioned him about whether recent anti-NAFTA protests in the state capital, Tuxtla, were organized by the clandestine Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR). (La Jornada, Feb. 7)

After meeting with UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour, Mexican President Felipe Calderón announced Feb. 6 that he would gradually remove army troops from drug enforcement duty, replacing them with newly-trained police units. Use of the military in Mexico's war on the drug cartels has been harshly criticized by rights groups, including the official National Human Rights Commission. However, the official plan still posted to the website of Mexico's Federal Registry says military forces will remain involved in drug enforcement through the end of Calderón's term in 2012. (Bloomberg, Feb. 6)

Jan Eliasson, UN special envoy for Darfur, warns that deployment of peacekeeping forces continues to be stalled and that rebel groups show little willingness to enter peace talks. (NYT, Feb. 9) Meanwhile, the ongoing carnage barely gets headlines anymore. This Feb. 8 Reuters account rated less than two column-inches at the bottom of page 5 in the following day's Times:

Sudanese government aircraft, army and militia attacked three towns in West Darfur state on Friday, causing heavy civilian casualties, Darfur rebels and witnesses said.

The New York Times reports Feb. 9 that military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing a "sweeping" case against suspected conspirators in the 9-11 plot. The charges, to be filed in the military commission system at Guantánamo Bay, are said to involve six detainees at the camp, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, known as "KSM." However, KSM was subject to waterboarding while in CIA custody, the agency's director Gen. Michael V. Hayden confirmed this week—throwing into question his supposed confession that "I was responsible for the 9-11 operation, from A to Z."

Matthew Wald reported for the New York Times Feb. 6. that the US Energy Department is subsidizing two Russian nuclear institutes at Nizhny Novgorod that are building key parts of the Bushehr reactor in Iran that Washington has spent years trying to stop. One institute, the Scientific Research Institute of Measuring Systems, is providing control systems for the Iranian plant; the other is providing hundreds of pumps and ventilation fans. Russia has agreed to take back the spent fuel from the Bushehr plant, so the plutonium cannot be recovered by the Iranians. The Energy Department is subsidizing the institutes under the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, set up after the collapse of the USSR to maintain control of Soviet nuclear expertise and technology.

Clearing vast tracts of land for biofuels production would hinder—not help—the effort to slow global warming, according to two new studies published in the journal Science. Although such fuels emit less greenhouse gases than fossil fuels, clearing forests and other native ecosystems releases carbon dioxide from plants and soil through fire or decomposition. Additionally, cropland absorbs less carbon than the native ecosystems it replaces.