Riots broke out in Italy and Greece Nov. 17 as new Italian prime minister Mario Monti won a parliamentary vote of confidence in his new government. The vote was held after Monti announced new "reform" measures to address a financial crisis that he calls a "serious emergency." Student protesters took to the streets in Milan, clashing with riot police as they tried to reach Bocconi University. More than 50,000 took to the streets in Greece to rally against similar austerity measures announced by the parliament-appointed emergency government headed by Lucas Papademos, former governor of the Greek central bank. Riot police fired tear gas during an anti-austerity march in Athens. The Greek protests marked the 38th anniversary of the 1973 uprising at the Athens Polytechnic University against the dictatorship then ruling Greece, which saw many students die but led to the fall of the military regime.

New York City police arrested some 200 protesters on the morning of Nov. 17 as hundreds converged on the Financial District for a "Shut Down Wall Street" action to note the two-month mark of the Occupation movement. With Wall Street itself under tight police control, protesters blocked surrounding intersections, and some scuffled with police. That evening, some 30,000 rallied at Foley Square and then marched over the Brooklyn Bridge. Participants prominently included unionists, especially from SEIU 1199 (hospital workers) , CWA 1101 (Verizon) and the Professional Staff Congress (CUNY). At the entrance of the bridge, a blinking sign read, "Peds on the roadway are subject to arrest"—a reference to the mass arrests of Oct. 1. The march took hours to cross to Brooklyn on the pedestrian catwalk. Hundreds of activists also attempted to occupy the Union Square subway hub during rush hour, and then marched down to Foley Square. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said five police officers were injured in the morning civil disobedience.

Hundreds of riot police backed up by 200 navy commandos invaded the Rio de Janeiro favelas of Rocinha, Vidigal and Chacara do Ceu in the wee hours of Nov. 13. The next day, the elite Special Operations Police Battalion (BOPE) said they had uncovered the secret "mansion" of wanted drug lord Antônio Bonfim Lopes AKA "Nem" in Rocinha. "Nem" was reportedly arrested at the scene. The shanty-towns had long been controlled by drug gangs, and were a no-go zone for police. Authorities say they plan to "pacify" dozens more favelas ahead of the 2014 World Cup. (Noticias R7, Rio de Janeiro, Nov. 17; AFP, Nov. 15; AFP, Nov. 14)

The discovery of a drug tunnel linking San Diego and Tijuana warehouses led to the seizure of some 17 tons of cannabis as well as a large grow operation in the industrial area of Otay Mesa east of San Diego, US and Mexican authorities announced Nov. 16. The tunnel's opening in Tijuana was discovered by soldiers in an industrial construction site near the airport. Mexican authorities alerted their US counterparts, who found the opening in Otay Mesa, where several so-called narco-tunnels have been found in recent years. The seized marijuana bundles were labeled with pictures of Captain America, the symbol used by a major local operator for the Sinaloa Cartel, Mexican military authorities said.

In the predawn hours of Nov. 9, the decapitated and mutilated body of an unidentified man was found at the Christopher Colombus monument in an upscale neighborhood of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. A message left under the decapitated head named the man as "El Rascatripas," a moderator for the website Nuevo Laredo en Vivo, where citizens anonymously report narco-violence. The note reads: "Hello! I'm Rascatripas and this happened to me for failing to understand that I should not report things on social media websites...With this last report I bid farewell to Nuevo Laredo en Vivo... Your moderator, Rascatripas." Nuevo Laredo en Vivo denied that the victim had anything to do with the site, Tweeting that the murder was an act to frighten off other members of its online community. Three users of the website have already been slain.

A blast at Iran's Alghadir missile base at Bid Ganeh—so powerful it rattled windows 30 miles away in Tehran—has raised speculation about Israeli covert action against the Islamic Republic's nuclear program. Seventeen of the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed, among them a man described as the "architect" of the country's missile program, Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam, reported to have been trained in ballistic science by China and North Korea. Mostafa Izadi, an Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commander, and a close friend, said in his obituary: "Since 1984 he pioneered the IRGC's ground-to-ground missile system...the work which has so frightened the world's imperialist powers and the Zionist regime today."

At a Nov. 10 session, the Mexican Senate called on the government of President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa to start criminal proceedings against US officials involved in two programs that let firearms enter Mexico illegally. The programs, Operation Wide Receiver in 2006 and 2007 and Operation Fast and Furious in 2009 and 2010, were supposed to help US agents trace illegal gun smuggling by monitoring suspect weapons purchases. But the agents lost track of some 2,300 firearms that were transported into Mexico, largely for the use of drug cartels.

Sylvie van den Wildenberg, spokesperson for the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), acknowledged in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 11 that the mission had received a petition for relief filed on behalf of hundreds of thousands of cholera victims. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates that the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti in October 2010 was caused by poor sanitation at a base operated by MINISTAH, a 10,000-member international military and police operation which has occupied the country since June 2004. Almost 500,000 Haitians have contracted the disease over the past year, and some 6,500 have died from it. MINUSTAH and the United Nations (UN) have refused to accept responsibility for the epidemic. (AlterPresse, Haiti, Nov. 11)