Five bomb attacks in Baghdad, Latifiyah and elsewhere in central Iraq targeted Shi'ite pilgrims headed for the holy city of Karbala Dec. 6 for Ashura celebrations, killing 21 people and wounding nearly 100. Car bombs and roadside devices were aimed at buses carrying the pilgrims, and places where they gathered. (AP, Daily Star, Lebanon, Dec. 6) That same day, simultaneous attacks on public Ashura observations were carried out in three Afghan cities. The attack in Kabul left more than 50 dead. At least four were also killed in Mazar-i-Sharif, while the attack in Kandahar caused several injuries. The Kabul bomb was the deadliest in the capital since 2008. The banned Pakistani group Lashkar-i-Jhangvi claimed responsibility—a Sunni militant organization with a special anti-Shia mission. (AFP, Dec. 7; UN Dispatch, Reuters, BBC News, Dec. 6)

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Dec. 6 urged all sides in Yemen to cease ongoing deadly attacks and live up to previous commitments to investigate the serious human rights violations of its former government. Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), meanwhile condemned all Yemeni factions after claiming that as many as 22 people have been killed in the city of Taiz by shootings and shellings since Dec. 1, including two children. Despite tanks withdrawing from the city under a ceasefire pact to end violence that has consumed the country for nearly 10 months, witnesses and activists have claimed that forces loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh shot and killed a woman protester in Taiz just this week. Shamdasani added that the ongoing severity of the clashes between armed rebels and the Yemeni army warrant an immediate intervention by the OHCHR. She called on Yemeni government officials to allow a UN investigation as soon as possible. The Yemeni government has yet to issue a response.

Norma Andrade, a leader of the organization Our Daughters Return Home and a critical voice demanding justice in the long string of "femicides" in Ciudad Juárez is stable condition after being shot twice Dec. 2, as she drove home from her job as a teacher in the violent Mexican border city. Five shots were fired altogether. Chihuahua state police said she was the apparent victim of a carjacking or robbery. But the Mexico office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a statement calling for authorities to take actions to protect human rights defenders in the country. (UN News Centre, Nov. 6; CNN, Dec. 6; El Paso Times, Dec. 3)

Honduran radio journalist Luz Marina Paz Villalobos and a driver identified as her cousin were killed Dec. 6 in a hail of bullets fired by men on two motorbikes as they sat in their car preparing to leave for work from her home in the San Francisco de Comayagüela district of Tegucigalpa. Paz, 38, hosted a morning program, "Three In The News," broadcast on the Honduran News Channel, where she often discussed politics and drug trafficking, and had been an outspoken critic of the 2009 coup d'etat.

The UN Economic Comission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, CEPAL in Spanish) released a report on Nov. 29 showing that the poverty rate in Latin America had dropped from 48.4% to 31.4% between 1990 and 2010, while the indigence rate fell from 22.6% to 12.3%. Despite the progress, 174 million people continue to live in poverty, and their situation is likely to worsen because of rising food costs, according to the UN commission, which is based in Chile.

Unknown assailants gunned down Mexican activist Nepomuceno Moreno Núñez on a street in Hermosillo, the capital of the northern state of Sonora, on Nov. 28. Moreno Núñez had been working with the Movement for Peace With Justice and Dignity (MPJD), which was founded by the poet Javier Sicilia this year to oppose the militarized "war on drugs" that has killed as many as 50,000 Mexican since late 2006.

Chilean judge Jorge Zepeda issued an indictment on Nov. 29 charging former US Navy Capt. Ray E. Davis with involvement in the murders of two US citizens, journalist Charles Horman and graduate student Frank Teruggi, in the days after the Sept. 11, 1973 military coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende Gossens. Judge Zepeda asked the Chilean Supreme Court to authorize a request for Davis' extradition from the US. The judge also indicted retired Chilean army Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo, who is already in prison for several other crimes.

The Montreal-based apparel firm Gildan Activewear Inc. has asked its Haitian subcontractor, Genesis S.A., to reinstate four unionized workers that the plant's managers fired in the last week of September, Gildan senior vice president Peter Iliopoulos told the Montreal Gazette on Nov. 29. The company has "requested the reinstatement of the employees with full back pay dating back to the date of dismissal and also recognition of full seniority for these individuals as though they had never left the company or factory," Iliopoulos said. Another major North American apparel firm, North Carolina-based Hanesbrands Inc., has taken similar action with its subcontractor in Haiti, Multiwear SA, which fired Hilaire Jean-Jacques, a member of the same union, on Sept. 30.