International human rights officials toured the new US detention facility in Parwan, Afghanistan, at the edge of Bagram Air Base Nov. 15. The new facility, which has room for 1,400 detainees, is part of the Obama administration's wider efforts to improve its Afghan detainee system and will eventually be controlled by the Afghan government. In a US Embassy press release, officials promised greater transparency based on a case management system, which will allow detainees to be informed of the charges against them and provide them with the right to challenge government witnesses. Amnesty International and other human rights groups called on the Obama administration to make sure its detention policy conforms to international law.

Business leaders in Ciudad Juárez are calling on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to police the Mexican border city in the face of escalating drug-related violence. Groups representing maquiladora plants, retailers and other businesses announced Nov. 12 that they will submit a request to the Mexican government and the Inter American Human Rights Commission. Members of the Maquiladora Association of Ciudad Juarez and Chamber of Commerce say the peacekeepers are needed to end the wave of extortion, kidnappings and murders.

The chief of the DAS, Colombia's secret police, says a mob assaulted three of its agents as they tried to arrest a suspect with guerilla ties Nov. 15. DAS director Felipe Muñoz says Ivan Danilo Alarcon, wanted for rebellion and drug trafficking, was detained near a university in the city of Cali. Muñoz says Alarcon cried out he was being kidnapped and 100 people surrounded the officers. The crowd detained the agents for over an hour, threatened them with death and took their weapons and armored vests. They freed Alarcon from handcuffs, and he fled. Muñoz charged that Alarcon posed as a human rights activist but was in fact giving logistical support to the FARC. (AP, Nov. 15)

Colombia Nov. 14 deported four members of the Venezuelan National Guard who were allegedly detained on Colombian territory a day earlier. Bogotá says the men were stopped by a Colombian naval patrol in a boat on a river in the remote border department of Vichada. Colombia's Administrative Security Department said the men were turned over the Venezuelan authorities at the border town of Puerto Páez. Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe made much of the deportations as a magnanimous gesture, saying he intended them as a message of the "unbreakable affection" between the two countries. Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez called Uribe a "mafioso" in comments on the detainment of the guardsmen, and ruled out any dialogue with his "traitorous" government. (BBC News, Nov. 15; EFE, Nov. 14)

The New York Times virtually sneers in a Nov. 12 headline, "Blackouts Plague Energy-Rich Venezuela," reporting that despite vast reserves of oil, coal and natural gas, electricity is being cut for hours each day in rural areas and in industrial cities like Valencia and Ciudad Guayana, with water rationing instated in Caracas. This has all started since the government has largely taken over the energy sector. "We're paying for the mistakes of this president and his incompetent managers," said Aixa López, president of the Committee of Blackout Victims, which has organized protests in several cities. In some cities, protesters have left household appliances on the steps of state power companies.

Speaking at a ceremony at the Gualberto Villarroel Military Collage in La Paz marking the 199th anniversary of the Bolivian army, President Evo Morales warned that the United States has designs on the country's subsoil resources—especially naming gas, iron and lithium. He also again criticized the new military accord between Washington and Bogotá as a threat to the hemisphere, and said that in response Bolivia will seek new military deals with China and Russia. "It is an obligation of the national government to improve and equip the army," he said, while adding that new equipment will be used to defend Bolivia's sovereignty; "it will not be to humiliate the people or provoke neighbors." (TeleSUR, Nov. 14)

The Peruvian government is aggressively touting claims that international oil majors are about to return to the country's hydrocarbon-rich Amazon region after being scared off by political instability for nearly a generation. Daniel Saba, president of the state energy company PetroPeru, told reporters Nov. 10 that the French Total, one of the world's four top oil companies, is currently evaluating potential contracts. "They are interested in entering the zones where hydrocarbon discoveries are occurring, whether gas or petroleum; they are investigating the Peruvian market," he said.

The Peruvian government's unprecedented attempt to destroy the country's Amazon indigenous movement has been condemned by indigenous leaders around the world. The wave of condemnation comes after it was revealed that the government plans to disband Peru's national organization for Amazonian indigenous peoples, the Inter-ethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Rainforest (AIDESEP).