At the point of completing 40 days without food, 10 prisoners in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas—plus one who had been transfered out of state—ended their hunger strike Nov. 7, citing the imminent threat to their health and the lack of any response to their demands from state or federal authorities. Their family members and supporters have taken up the struggle by launching an ongoing protest vigil (plantón) outside the State Center of Social Reinsertion (CERSS), and blockading the San Cristóbal-Ocosingo highway that passes by the facility.

Mexico's military and police have committed widespread human rights violations in efforts to combat organized crime, virtually none of which are being adequately investigated, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Nov. 9. The 212-page report "Neither Rights Nor Security: Killings, Torture, and Disappearances in Mexico's 'War on Drugs'," examines the human rights consequences of President Felipe Calderón’s approach to confronting Mexico's powerful drug cartels. The report finds evidence that strongly suggests the participation of security forces in more than 170 cases of torture, 39 "disappearances," and 24 extrajudicial killings since Calderón took office in December 2006. "Instead of reducing violence, Mexico's 'war on drugs' has resulted in a dramatic increase in killings, torture, and other appalling abuses by security forces, which only make the climate of lawlessness and fear worse in many parts of the country," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch.

Niger's military clashed Nov. 7 with a heavily armed convoy travelling though the desert from Libya. Thirteen of the convoy's gunmen were killed and several captured. Authorities said they believed the convoy is made up of fleeing Qaddafi loyalists escorted by local Tuareg fighters, and headed for Mali. A huge weapons cache, including machine guns and rockets, was seized in the clashes in the Arlit area. Northern Niger's Radio Nomad reported that local traffickers are selling Libyan arms to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). (BBC News, Nov. 9)

Farmers staged sit-in protests at five regional offices of lawmakers of South Korea's ruling Grand National Party on Nov. 9, demanding no ratification of the new US-Korea Free Trade Agreement. "The protests are to denounce the GNP, which is moving to ratify the FTA that will surely devastate the local agricultural industry," said a leader of the Korea Farmers League’s branch for North Gyeongsang province, which organized the protests. "We will mount a campaign against those lawmakers who vote in favor of the deal." (Korea Herald, Nov. 9) Days earlier, police in Seoul fired water cannons to disperse more than 2,000 protesters who tried to break into the National Assembly as lawmakers debated FTA ratification. (AP, Nov. 3)

Residents of San José del Progreso, a municipality in the Ocotlán district of the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, say they are continuing their three-year struggle against a mine operated by Toronto-based Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. They blocked the entrance to the company's San José mine for 40 days in the spring of 2009, charging that there had already been environmental damage even though the mine wasn't yet in operation; they also said the authorities had licensed the project without community consultation. The protest was ended abruptly when some 700 police agents, armed with assault rifles and backed up by a helicopter, stormed the community on May 6 of that year.

A scandal involving US law enforcement programs to let guns "walk" into Mexico has now widened to include the 2001-2008 administration of former president George W. Bush, a Republican, as well as the administration of current Democratic president Barack Obama. The latest revelations concern a program codenamed Operation Wide Receiver, in which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) reportedly allowed some 350 or 400 guns to enter Mexico illegally during 2006 and 2007.

Honduran police officials gave contradictory responses on Nov. 1 to a report published the day before about the disappearance of some 300 light automatic rifles (FAL, from the initials in Spanish) and 300,000 5.56-caliber bullets from a police unit. The weapons, which were in the control of the Cobras special operations police group, were taken from a Tegucigalpa warehouse in August or September; the Tegucigalpa daily El Heraldo broke the story on Oct. 31.

A US Congress member, Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY), has written US president Barack Obama asking for the declassification of several US intelligence documents with information on the abduction of children in Argentina during the 1976-1983 "dirty war" against suspected leftists. An estimated 30,000 people were disappeared, including hundreds of pregnant women whose babies are believed to have been taken by the military dictatorship then in power and given to adoptive parents. Argentine authorities have been seeking in formation on these cases to aid in the prosecution of former officials and to allow children to be reunited with their biological relatives.