Eleven Iranian police agents were killed when a highway patrol intercepted what officials called an "illicit drug convoy" in Southern Khorasan Province near the Afghan border Jan. 1. Four traffickers were also reported wounded in the clash, and one wounded. Reports said police "attempted to confiscate" around two tons of drugs—but did not indicate what type of drugs, or if the confiscation was successful. Reports also indicate the convoy was headed north, which is not the most logical route if it was leaving Afghanistan, as accounts implied.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama have agreed to fund a special counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen to tackle the rising threat from the country. The announcement comes as the US and UK shut their embassies in Yemen's capital Sana Dec. 3, the US State Department citing unspecified but "ongoing threats by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula," the regional franchise of the terror network. The closures came a day after a quiet visit to Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the US regional commander, who delivered a message from Obama of support for Yemen's unity and counter-terrorism efforts. (Press TV, NYT, Jan. 3)

Some 400 prisoners revolted on New Years Eve at Huancas prison in the northeastern Peruvian city of Chachapoyas, taking several guards hostage and seizing part of the facility. Two inmates were killed by guard gunfire, and at least six guards are still being held hostage. The prisoners are demanding better food and conditions, speedier trials, and that administration of the facility be transfered to the National Police from the National Penitentiary Institute (INPE), which they accuse of corruption. A commission led by Deputy Justice Minister Gerardo Castro has been sent to the prison to negotiate. (Periodismo Peru, LAHT, Jan. 2)

If anyone was celebrating the new year last evening, it must have been the five Blackwater guards charged in the massacre of 17 innocent Iraqi civilians in Nisur Square, Baghdad, two years ago. On New Years Eve afternoon, Judge Ricardo Urbina of the DC District Court dismissed all criminal charges against them, on the basis that their indictment was procured—twice in fact—using statements they made to State Department investigators under threat of losing their jobs. In the United States, coerced confessions are inadmissible as evidence, and cannot be presented to a grand jury in order to obtain an indictment.

The Israeli daily Ha'aretz reports Jan. 1 that construction in West Bank settlements is "booming" despite the freeze that was officially declared Nov. 26. "Haaretz toured the area on Wednesday and witnessed work being carried out in the Barkan and Ariel industrial zones, as well as the construction of housing at Ariel, Elkana North, Peduel and Kfar Tapuah. A sign at Kfar Tapuah announced plans for the construction of 65 new housing units. Israel patrols were evident, but not inspectors of the Civil Administration enforcing the construction ban."

Several international activists were reported injured by Egyptian riot police during demonstrations with the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo Dec. 31. "There was a Moroccan-Italian woman who was punched in the face and was taken for treatment," said Medea Benjamin, a prominent US anti-war activist who organized the Gaza initiative. She said a number of people received cuts, bruises and other injuries. "It was quite the brutal scene."

Israel's supreme court Dec. 29 ordered the military to allow Palestinians to travel on part of a major highway that runs through the West Bank. The move, heralded by human rights activists, reopens to Palestinians a 20-kilometer section of Route 443, which links Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. "It's a huge victory," said Melanie Takefman, a spokeswoman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which represented the six Palestinian villages that appealed to the court to lift the ban.

World-renowned political organizer and one of Africa's most celebrated poets, Dennis Brutus, died early on Dec. 26 in Cape Town, in his sleep, aged 85. Even in his last days, Brutus was fully engaged, advocating social protest against those responsible for climate change, and promoting reparations to black South Africans from corporations that benefited from apartheid. He was a leading plaintiff in the Alien Tort Claims Act case against major firms that is now making progress in the US court system.