From AP, via the New York Times, Jan. 10:

President-elect Evo Morales of Bolivia met with President Hu Jintao of China in Beijing and called China an "ideological ally," a day after he invited it to develop Bolivia's vast gas reserves. China has been developing links with Latin American nations as sources of fuel and raw materials and as markets for its exports. Mr. Hu promised to encourage "strong and prestigious" Chinese companies to invest in Bolivia, the official New China News Agency reported. On Sunday, Mr. Morales met with Tang Jiaxuan, the Chinese state councilor, and invited China to help with his country's gas industry after he carries out plans to nationalize its reserves.

From DPA, Jan. 9, via United Arab Emirates' Khaleej Times:

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan on Monday said it has launched a strong protest with the Afghan-based Coalition Forces over weekend firing from across the border that killed eight people in the country's North Waziristan tribal region.

"We have protested with the Coalition Forces as they are responsible for security on the other side of the (Pakistan-Afghan) border," Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam told reporters in Islamabad.

From Newsday, Jan. 9:

[A] French engineer abducted Dec. 5 apparently was dumped on a Baghdad street by his fleeing captors and recovered by U.S. troops, who turned him turned over to the French Embassy on Sunday, according to Iraqi police and the French Foreign Ministry in Paris. Bernard Planche, 52, was kidnapped on his way to work at a water plant. Planche worked for a non-governmental organization called AACCESS and was found Saturday night near a checkpoint in the Abu Ghraib neighborhood. His captors had demanded the withdrawal from Iraq of French troops—even though the country has none in Iraq.

From Arab Monitor, Jan. 8:

US occupation troops burst into the Umm al-Qura Mosque compound in western Baghdad and ransacked the offices of the headquarter of the Association of Muslim Scholars. The troops arrested a member of the Association, two employees and two guardsmen. Pictures taken by Reuters TV showed that many doors had been forced open and explosive charges and shotgun shells strewn on the ground, while Christian crosses had been scrawled on the shelves used for deploying the worshippers' shoes.

Zapatista leaders and family members held a small, private funeral for Comandante Ramona somewhere in the territory of the mountain hamlet of Oventic Jan. 7. The exact location was not revealed. (El Universal, Jan. 7) In a Jan. 9 communique, the Zapatista General Command issued a revised schedule for their national tour:

Lt. Gen. Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar, the Brazilian head of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), was found dead in his room at Port-au-Prince's Montana Hotel on Jan. 7 after apparently shooting himself in the head, according to United Nations (UN) officials. The Brazilian military initially described the incident as a "firearm accident," while reports circulated that Teixeira had killed himself the evening of Jan. 6 after a dispute with the UN general secretary's special representative in Haiti, the Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdes.

Talli Nauman writes for Mexico's El Universal, Jan. 7 via Chiapas95:

Representatives of the first peoples of northern Mexico and the southwestern United States have issued a joint communique' they hope will set the new year's agenda for protection of the environment they have shared since long before a national border separated them.

Negotiators for 26 Mexican indigenous communities and U.S. tribes who felt their concerns were sidelined in a 2005 binational declaration on border environment, released their own statement in response.

On Jan. 6, just as the Zapatista national tour (dubbed the "Other Campaign" in reference to the presidential campaigns now underway in Mexico) had reached the town of Tonala, in the Pacific coastal zone of Chiapas state, word arrived that Comandante Ramona, a highly respected member of the Zapatista Army's General Command, had finally succumbed to kidney cancer after a long struggle. Subcomandante Marcos announced from Tonala that the tour would be delayed by two days as the Zapatistas congregated in the highland hamlet of Oventic for Ramona's funeral. "Comandante Ramona snatched 10 years from death," Marcos said. "[T]he world lost one of those women who give birth to new worlds."