Leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), meeting in the Philippine city of Cebu, are working on a regional anti-terror pact the day after a series of bombs exploded in nearby towns on the southern Mindanao island. At least eight were killed and over 30 injured in the attacks in Cotabato City, General Santos City and Kidapawan City.

Two people were killed and more than 70 injured Jan. 11 as supporters and opponents of President Evo Morales battled with guns, sticks and rocks on the streets of Cochabamba. Fighting broke out when supporters of Gov. Manfredo Reyes Villa entered downtown Cochabamba, which has been occupied since Jan. 8 by thousands of protesters demanding he step down. Reyes Villa is at odds with the national government over his plans to call a referendum on regional autonomy.

The wives of eight campesinos from Ayacucho, Peru, who were arrested for involvement in a December ambush on a police patrol have began a hunger strike to demand the their release. Peru's Interior Minister Pilar Mazzetti admitted in a press conference Jan. 9 that National Police investigators have not find any relation between the arrested men and the Shining Path guerilla movement.

From La Jornada, Jan. 10 via Chiapas95 (our translation):

Hundreds of inhabitants of the Sierra de Chiapas blocked trucks and machinery transporting wood from the zone, and initiated a protest vigil in front of the municipal presidency in Motozintla in protest of the timber companies which are exploiting the resouces without any plan for forest recovery.

From El Universal, Jan. 10 via Chiapas95:

Soaring tortilla prices have touched off a budding crisis, threatening the traditional affordability of the nation's most politically sensitive food product.

Cindy Sheehan, mother of a US soldier killed in Iraq, was among several US citizens who arrived in Cuba on Jan. 6 in preparation for a series of actions Jan. 9-13 to protest the US military's use of its Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba to detain Muslim men captured as alleged "enemy combatants" in the "war on terror." The rest of the delegation is scheduled to arrive on Jan. 9 for a press conference that day in Havana, followed by a Jan. 10 conference in the Cuban city of Guantanamo on prison conditions and international law.

On Dec. 29 Chilean judge Haroldo Brito sentenced 13 former security agents to prison terms ranging from five to 18 years for four revenge murders carried out after a September 1986 attempt to kill Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990. Alvaro Corbalan Castilla, the former operations chief of the National Information Center (CNI), received the heaviest sentence, 18 years; he is already serving a 15-year sentence in the 1987 "Operation Albania" murder case. The defendants are expected to appeal the sentences.

Paraguayan general Alejandro Fretes Davalos, who led the imprisonment and torture of hundreds of people under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989), died on Dec. 29 following a lengthy illness. Fretes had graduated from Chile's Military School, where he served under Augusto Pinochet before Pinochet seized power. Fretes also trained at the US Army School of the Americas in Panama in 1956 while still a major, taking the "Field Grade Officer" course.