Iranian authorities have arrested seven for planning to provoke riots on Feb. 11, the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, including several in the employ of the US Central Intelligence Agency, according to a statement released Feb. 7 by the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The seven detained were said to be linked to the US-funded Radio Farda, a Prague-based Persian language radio station that has been blocked by the Iranian government, and was described in the statement as a counter-revolutionary and Zionist satellite channel. According to Iranian authorities, the seven were trained in Dubai and Istanbul and played a key role in the anti-government protests held in Tehran last December, during the Shi'ite holy day of Ashura. According to authorities, they were to flee the country after Feb. 11. (Jurist, Feb. 7)

Russia's foreign ministry voiced its "concern" Feb. 5 at Romania's plans to host part of a new US "missile shield" system for Europe. "This is a serious matter," the ministry said in a statement, adding that Moscow will seek explanations from Washington and Europe. The statement came the day after Romania's President Traian Basescu announced his country has agreed to host medium-range ballistic missile interceptors as part of the US system, expected to be operational by 2015. The US State Department confirmed his announcement, saying the planned missile shield is intended to protect against the "emergent threat" from Iran.

Former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein was named by new Honduran President Porfirio Lobo last week to head a "Truth Commission" to examine the June 2009 coup d'etat that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the circumstances leading up to it. Formation of the Commission was a condition of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord brokered by Costa Rica last year to end the Honduran crisis. (DPA, Feb. 4) The Popular Resistance Front of Honduras, which mobilized to oppose the coup, issued a statement rejecting the Truth Commission. Front coordinator Juan Barahona called it an attempt to "whitewash" (limpiarse) the coup, and re-establish diplomatic recognition and aid from the international community. (ABN, Venezuela, Feb. 7)

Gunmen stormed into a nightclub Feb. 6 in the Mexican beach resort of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, and opened fire on the crowded dance floor, leaving three dead—two waiters and a patron. They shot down three more at the door as they fled, killing a total of six. (Reuters, Feb. 6) That previous day in Apatzingán, Michoacán, police found the decapitated bodies of six men with their severed heads inside an SUV. (AP, Feb. 5)

Bolivian President Evo Morales was sworn in for a second five-year term on Jan. 22, pledging to open a new era for indigenous peoples in his nation. The formal swearing-in at the capital La Paz was preceded a day earlier by a traditional indigenous ceremony at the ancient Kalasasaya temple in the ruined pre-Inca city of Tiwanaku. (RIA-Novosti, Jan. 22)

The Native Alaskan coastal village of Kivalina, its lands rapidly eroding, is appealing a lawsuit against oil, power and coal companies, charging that climate change endangers their community. The town of Kivalina and a federally recognized tribe, the Alaska Native village of Kivalina, filed the case in federal court in San Francisco in 2008, but it was dismissed in October. The appeal has been filed with the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals. ExxonMobil and BP are among two dozen defendants named in the suit.

Sea ice in Canada's Arctic is melting faster than previously expected, the lead investigator in Ottawa's largest climate-change study yet said Feb. 5—raising a worst-case scenario of an ice-free Arctic by 2013. University of Manitoba professor David Barber, leader of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead System Study, said "It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic models suggested."

This week the Barack Obama administration's Defense Department released its first Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a congressionally mandated planning and strategy document that every four years provides a framework for the military's structure and budgets. The 2010 QDR abandons the Bush administration's "Long War" doctrine. Significantly, the report states that the US will no longer prepare to fight two major wars at the same.