In a ceremony broadcast on national television from the presidential residence in Tegucigalpa on Feb. 17, Honduran president Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa and National Agrarian Reform Institute director (INA) César Ham signed an accord with two campesino organizations to finance the purchase of land for campesino cooperatives in the Lower Aguán Valley in the north of the country. The government has presented the land deal as at least a partial solution to long-running disputes in the Aguán that have left more than 50 people dead over the past two years.

After blocking roads for 13 days to demand more resources for Chile's isolated southern Aysén region, local citizens' groups opened up the Presidente Ibáñez Bridge in Puerto Aysén on Feb. 25. The move came one day after the Social Movement for the Aysén Region, the coalition of fishing people, unionists, cab drivers and students that has led the protests, presented the national government with a new list of demands, asking for a response over the weekend. Iván Fuentes, one of the movement's leaders, told Radio Cooperativa that the protesters opened the bridge"first of all [to provide] free access to the community, and most importantly, to give a signal to the government that just as we are vigorous in our mobilization, we're also rational people who can carry on a conversation." (AFP, Feb. 25, via La Nación, Paraguay)

An Argentine commuter train smashed into a barrier at Station 11 in the center of Buenos Aires on the morning of Feb. 22, killing 51 passengers and injuring 706. Failing brakes caused the crash, the train's operator told a judge. According to a source in the judicial system, Marcos Córdoba testified that the brakes had failed twice before the crowded train crashed, and that he had warned his supervisors."In each station I advised the traffic controller by radio that I had problems with the brakes," Córdoba said."From the other side they answered: 'Go on, go on, go on.'"

Syria held a referendum Feb. 26 to vote on a new constitution. The gesture towards the opposition by President Bashar al-Assad has widely been seen as an empty one, with much of the international community calling it a "sham." The vote comes just one day after 89 people were reportedly killed in Homs, the center of the opposition. The proposed constitution will impose term limits on the president as well as provide for a multi-party system. However, the term limits will theoretically begin once the constitution passes, meaning Assad's previous time in office will not be counted against the term limits.

Some 5,000 Malaysians staged a protest against a refinery for rare earth elements being built by the Australian mining company Lynas in Kuantan, Pahang state, Feb. 26. The protest—dubbed Green Gathering 2.0—featured green-clad activists beating drums as well as opposition MPs. Many protesters wore green T-shirts with the words "Stop Lynas," and some shouted "Destroy Lynas!" Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim said his alliance will seek an emergency motion in parliament to urge the government to cancel the project, and pledged that the opposition would scrap the plant if it won elections expected by June. "We don't want [this project] to sacrifice our culture and the safety of the children," he told the crowd. The Lynas website was also hacked, with a Malaysian flag and the slogan "Stop Lynas, Save Malaysia" replacing the corporate logo.

Some 60,000 Azeris gathered in Baku Feb. 26 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Khojaly massacre in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. President Ilham Aliyev participated in the mass gathering at Azadlig Square. Young people held portraits of the victims, under banners reading, "The world must recognize the Khojaly genocide" and "No to Armenian fascism!" (News.az, Feb. 26)

How predictable. Just as the presidential horserace starts to gain velocity, so do oil prices. The Feb. 26 Reuters headline reads "Oil price rise raises specter of global recession." We are informed: "Oil rose to a 10-month high above $125 a barrel Friday, prompting responses from policymakers around the world including US President Barack Obama, watching US gasoline prices follow crude to push toward $4 a gallon in an election year." The Reuters account cites jitters over a new military conflagration in the Persian Gulf, which is certainly a factor. But some are seeing an intentional manipulation by the most reactionary sectors of the petro-oligarchy to undermine Obama...

Khader Adnan, the Palestinian who recently ended a 66-day hunger strike against his detention by Israel without charge or trial, is recovering well, but still remains in a precarious medical condition, according to a joint statement from the Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer and Physicians for Human Rights—Israel, which respectively sent a lawyer and doctor to visit him on the 23rd. That same day, news emerged that a Palestinian woman has begun her own hunger strike against her detention without charge or trial by Israel. Hana Yahya al-Shalabi spent more than two years in administrative detention, and had been freed in October as part of the prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. On Feb. 17, al-Shalabi, who is 29, was once again arrested by Israeli occupation forces from her home near Jenin in the occupied West Bank, and is again under detention without charge or trial. (Electronic Intifada, Feb. 23)