According to protesters, about 100 regular police and riot squad agents used tear gas and live ammunition on May 23 to break up a demonstration by members of the indigenous Lenca community of San Antonio Chuchuitepeque in the northwestern Honduran department of Santa Bárbara. A number of protesters were injured and five were arrested, according to Berta Isabel Cáceres Flores, the coordinator of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), who was present at the demonstration.

A series of events in the New York area from May 22 to 26 concluded a month-long tour of the US by a group of Mexican and Central American immigration activists seeking to broaden discussion of reforms the US Congress is considering for the country's immigration policy. The Opening Doors to Hope Caravan was led by Father Alejandro Solalinde Guerra, coordinator of the Brother and Sister Migrants on the Road shelter in Ciudad Ixtepec in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca; he has received death threats for his efforts to protect Central American immigrants from criminal gangs and corrupt officials during their transit through Mexico. The caravan was reminiscent of a Caravan for Peace led by Mexican poet and peace activist Javier Sicilia in the summer of 2012 but on a smaller scale.

Talks will resume soon between the Malian government and Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), according to the foreign ministry of Burkina Faso, which has been brokering the dialogue. Earlier this month, a Malian military spokesperson said the country was in the final stages of preparation for an assault on Kidal, the northern town that is held by the MNLA. The last negotiations were back in December before the French-led military offensive to remove the fundamentalist militias who had battled with the MNLA for control of Mali's north. The MNLA supports plans for national elections for an interim president on June 28, but says it will not allow army troops into Kidal for the vote. Said MNLA envoy Ibrahim Ag Mohamed Assaleh: "We suggest that security during the vote be guaranteed by UN troops... because no Azawad citizen can elect the future president of Mali under the protection of Mali's terrorist army." (AFP, May 24; Al Jazeera, May 20)

A group of Israeli settlers destroyed over 100 olive trees in a Nablus village on May 25 after spraying them with toxic chemicals, a Palestinian Authority official said.  Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an News Agency that settlers from the notoriously extreme Yizhar settlement sprayed toxic chemicals on some 100 trees, causing them to die. The trees belong to local residents Barakat Ghalib and Taysir Najjar, Daghlas added. The PA Ministry of Agriculture tested a sample from the trees and says it found traces of chemicals, without providing further details. Settlers routinely attack Palestinians and their property with impunity.

Col. Alberto Julio Candiotti, a former Argentinian military officer who was wanted for crimes committed during the country's 1976-1983 "Dirty War," was arrested May 23 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Information for the whereabouts of the 68-year-old, who was residing in the city with his wife, was valued at 100,000 pesos (USD $20,000). The former officer was arrested by Uruguay's National Police. Authorities are currently uncertain whether Candiotti sneaked into the country or falsified documents to gain admittance.

Negotiators from Colombia's government and the FARC rebels on May 26 signed an agreement on agrarian reform, the first and reportedly the hardest of three issues that must be tackled before a final deal to end nearly 50 years of civil war. In a joint press conference, the two negotiating teams said they had reached full agreement on points including "access and use of land," "non-productive lands," "formalization of property," and the "agricultural frontier and protection of reserve zones." Accords were also announced on technical assistance and credit for poor farmers. The pact calls for creation of a "Lands for Peace Fund" into which millions of illegally held or underused hectares will be placed for eventual redistribution to landless peasants and displaced populations. The negotiators said the deal will lead to "radical transformations of Colombia's rural and agrarian reality with equality and democracy." The remaining two issues are political participation and drug trafficking. (Colombia Reports, LAT, El Colombiano, Colprensa, May 26)

Naxalite rebels ambushed a convoy in a densely forested area of India's Chhattisgarh state as the Congress party members were returning from a rally May 25, leaving 28 dead and nearly as many injured. Four state party leaders and five police officers were among those killed. Other victims were party supporters. Police identified one of those dead as Mahendra Karma, also known as the "Bastar Tiger," a Congress leader in Chhattisgarh who founded a local militia, the Salwa Judum, to combat the Maoist guerillas. Authorities were forced to rein in the militia after it was accused of atrocities against adivasis—indigenous people on the bottom rungs of India's rigid social ladder. (AP, PTI, Times of India, May 26)

Turkey will build a 2.5-kilometer wall along the Cilvegözü post on the border with Syria to prevent illegal crossings, Trade and Customs Minister Hayati Yazıcı announced May 23. The border crossing lies within 10 kilometers from Reyhanlı town, where a twin bomb attack killed 51 and wounded more than 100 on May 11. A protocol with the Turkish Armed Forces has already been signed for the construction of the wall, Yazıcı said. (Hürriyet Daily News via France24, May 24)