On Dec. 29, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13526, setting new standards for how "national security" information is to be kept secret by federal government agencies. The Obama order replaces Executive Order 12958, issued by President Clinton in 1995 and amended by President Bush in 2003. Obama's order makes several significant changes to the policies of the two previous presidents, most notably in the treatment of historical materials more than 25 years old.

A White House spokesman said Jan. 5 that the US government will suspend transfers of Guantánamo Bay detainees to Yemen. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs made the announcement at his daily briefing amid increasing political pressure not to transfer any more detainees to Yemen after it was revealed that the man who attempted to detonate an explosive device on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 last month received al-Qaeda training in Yemen.

The special commission appointed last year to investigate last June's deadly confrontation between National Police and indigenous protesters at Bagua in the Peruvian Amazon handed in a final report over the New Year holiday, endorsed by the presidential appointees on the panel—but disavowed by those members representing indigenous communities. Speaking on the stalemate, President Alan García assailed his critics in the opposition Nationalist bloc in Peru's Congress for defending the "assassins" of 24 police agents. He made no reference to the at least 10 indigenous activists killed at Bagua.

On Jan. 3 a five-member panel of the Peruvian Supreme Court unanimously upheld a 25-year prison sentence for former president Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) for deaths and serious injuries caused by a paramilitary unit during his administration; Supreme Court justice César San Martín Castro had handed down the sentence on April 7, 2009. The panel also voted 4-1 to confirm Fujimori's conviction for two kidnappings. The ex-president, 71, could remain in prison until 2032; the two years since he was arrested in Chile in 2007 count as time served. He would be eligible for parole in 2025.

According to local media, on Dec. 10 a Guatemalan court issued arrest warrants for the brothers Francisco José and José Estuardo Valdez Paiz in the May 10, 2009 murder of attorney Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano. The Valdez brothers, who own pharmaceutical businesses and are reportedly distant relations of Rosenberg, are charged as the "intellectual authors" of the crime. Three of 11 people arrested in the case told the authorities that the brothers had contracted them to kill an alleged extortionist, who turned out to be Rosenberg. The suspects are thought to be out of the country.

Mexico's semi-governmental National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) has issued a recommendation to Zeferino Torreblanca, center-left governor of the southern state of Guerrero, in the unsolved case of two indigenous leaders kidnapped by three armed men on Feb. 13, 2009 in Ayutla de los Libres municipality, Guerrero, and found dead on Feb. 20 in Tecoanapa municipality. The CNDH noted irregularities in the state's investigation, and asked Torreblanca to correct them and to offer protection to witnesses and to the families of the victims, who were leaders in the Organization for the Development of the Mixteco Méphaa Peoples. (La Jornada, Jan. 3)

Mexican district judge Rosa Ileana Ortega Pérez in Oaxaca city issued an order on Dec. 30 giving the federal government 10 days to release activist Juan Manuel Martínez Moreno, who has been held since Oct. 16, 2008 for the murder of New York-based independent journalist Brad Will. Martínez Moreno, a member of the leftist Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), had already been cleared of the murder charges on Nov. 9 by magistrate judge Javier Leonel Santiago Martínez, who asked Judge Ortega Pérez to release the prisoner within 48 hours. However, the federal Attorney General's Office (PGR) appealed, as it is expected to do again with Judge Ortega Pérez’s decision.

Just before Christmas, President Barack Obama, signed one of the biggest US aid pledges of the year—$2.77 billion for Israel in 2010, and a total of $30 billion over the next decade. Israel is bound by the agreement to use 75% of the aid to buy military material made in the US. Israel has long been the top US aid recipient, followed by Egypt ($1.75 billion this year), which also receives most of its assistance in tied military aid. This is the first time the proviso is being applied to Israel.