A year ago, al-Qaeda issued a call for its followers to target oil infrastructure throughout the Islamic world. Now it threatens to take the campaign global, calling for attacks on US suppliers in the western hemisphere—especially invoking Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. From AFP, Feb. 14:

Italian police claim to have averted a major terrorist incident after the arrest of 15 men and women in northern Italy, who they said were members of the Red Brigades. The alleged leader of the plot, Alfredo Davanzo, 50, imprisoned for 10 years in the 1980s for Red Brigades actions, has declared himself a political prisoner. Police said the group was planning attacks on the home of Silvio Berlusconi, the offices of his TV company Mediaset and of News Corporation's Sky Italia, the office of right-wing daily Libero, and of ENI, Italy's principal oil company.

The passing of Turkmenistan's wacky despot Saparmurat "Turkmenbashi" Niyazov and the country's first-ever multi-candidate (although not multi-party) elections have brought no surprises so far. In the weeks prior to the Feb. 11 vote, Turkmen officials announced that foreign journalists would be welcome to observe, but EurasiaNet reports that "virtually no outside journalist seeking to cover the election received a visa to do so." In a Feb. 9 statement, the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the imposition of "restrictions" on foreign and domestic journalists hoping to cover the election. CPJ director Joel Simon said "the press is systematically impeded from doing its work" in Turkmenistan. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which operates an information-gathering network inside Turkmenistan, claimed that the turnout total of 99% appeared to be dramatically inflated. Hudayberdy Orazov, a Turkmen exile in Sweden who heads the Watan opposition movement, said there was "quite enough evidence" that the totals were manipulated. Avdy Kuliyev, another exiled Turkmen opposition leader, called the vote a "stage-managed drama," Russia's Itar-Tass news agency reported. "We consider the election … illegal and undemocratic, and of course, we cannot recognize it." (EurasiaNet, Feb. 12) All six candidates—chosen by the country's legislative body, the People's Council—pledged fealty to the ideas of Turkmenbashi and vowed to follow in his footsteps. (RFE/RL, Feb. 12)

Eighteen people were killed when a bomb exploded next to a bus owned by Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the southeast city of Zahedan, the official IRNA news agency reports. "In this act 18 Zahedan citizens have been martyred," said Qassim Rezai, a local military commander. "Rebels and those who create insecurity martyred these people in a terrorist act by laying a trap close to a bus." It is not clear if those killed were members of the Guards. (Bloomberg, Feb. 14)

The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) said in a statement issued Jan. 30 that it is adding 350 Nepalese soldiers to its force in order to fight crime in Port-au-Prince. The light infantry battalion of Nepalese soldiers began arriving the week of Jan. 29 and will be fully deployed by early March, according to MINUSTAH. Maj. Gen. Carlos Alberto Dos Santos Cruz, the Brazilian commander of the 9,000-member force, said some Nepalese troops would be deployed almost immediately in the capital's impoverished Cite Soleil neighborhood. "I am determined to increase the pressure on the gangs who have been holding the innocent people of Haiti hostage for so long," Santos Cruz said in the statement. "We must not give the gangs time to relax." (Haiti Support Network News Briefs, Jan. 30 from AP)

On the early morning of Jan. 25 some 100 state and municipal police agents removed workers and campesinos who for more than two weeks had been blocking access to the Los Filos gold mine near the community of Carrizalillo in Eduardo Neri municipality in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero. Carrizalillo resident Samuel Pena Maturana said some protesters, including two women, were beaten in the process; about 70 protesters were taken to a local police station and held for about four hours before being released. Campesinos also charged that police agents had looted some of their houses and stolen money and food.

Tens of thousands of Mexicans filled Mexico City's huge Zocalo plaza on Jan. 31 in the first large demonstration against the center-right government of President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, who took office on Dec. 1 and now faces popular anger over a dramatic rise in the price of corn and other staples. "Without corn, there's no country," the marchers chanted. "We don't want PAN, we want tortillas." (The initials of Calderon's National Action Party, PAN, form the Spanish for "bread.")

On Jan. 31, rightwing paramilitaries murdered community activist Yolanda Izquierdo in the city of Monteria, capital of Cordoba department in northern Colombia. Izquierdo had been receiving death threats since December, when she attended the first preliminary hearing where paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso was testifying about his crimes. The local prosecutor had requested protection for Izquierdo after the threats against her were reported in the Bogota daily newspaper El Tiempo. Mancuso is one of the top leaders of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC); leaders and members of the group are testifying about their crimes in exchange for leniency. The paramilitary hearings were established in negotiations over an alleged demobilization process, criticized by human rights groups as a sham and a coverup of massive rights violations.