On Nov. 13, in its second day of deliberations, a federal jury in Newark, NJ, awarded former asylum seeker Hawa Abdi Jama of Somalia $100,000 in damages after finding the private company that ran an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth negligent in its hiring and training. The jury rejected a claim that Jama's international human rights were violated during her 11-month detention at Elizabeth in 1994-95.

Over 20,000 people gathered outside the gates of Fort Benning, GA, on Nov. 18 to demand the closing of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), a US Army training school for Latin American military and security personnel formerly known as the School of the Americas (SOA). Eleven protesters were arrested as they crossed into the grounds of the fort.

Meeting in a heavily guarded military academy on the outskirts of Sucre, Bolivia's Constituent Assembly approved a new Constitution late on Nov. 24 with the support of 136 of the 255 delegates. Two delegates abstained, and the majority of the opposition, led by the Democratic and Social Power (PODEMOS) party, boycotted the session. Most of the votes for the new Constitution came from the leftist Movement to Socialism (MAS) of President Evo Morales, but some opposition delegates backed it, including three from PODEMOS. The Constituent Assembly, which has been meeting for 15 months, approved the document "as a whole" but left some details to be worked out.

Mario Zavala Navarrete, a leader of alumni of the Raul Isidro Burgos de Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers College in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, reported that he was assaulted by armed, masked assailants the night of Nov. 22. He said they followed him in a white van as he was heading home to Tixtia on a public bus after leaving the college. They caught him when he left the bus and beat him unconscious.

Several Haitian nongovernmental organizations--including the Haitian Platform for Alternative Development (PAPDA), Haitian Women's Solidarity (SOFA), Tet Kole Ti Peyizan ("Union of Small Farmers") and the National Coordinating Committee for Women's Rights (CONAP)—have written the Haitian government demanding an investigation of reports of sexual against Haitian women and minors by soldiers in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

The French-based group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) announced on Nov. 20 that journalist Joseph Guyler Delva fled from Haiti on Nov. 9. Delva said he'd started receiving death threats on Oct. 25. On the evening of Nov. 5 he found himself being followed by several people in a car. When he stopped at a gas station, some of his pursuers got out of their car and approached his vehicle. Delva drove away, and decided to leave for the US.

Near-simultaneous bombs exploded at courthouses in the northern Indian cities of Lucknow, Varanasi, and Faizabad Nov. 23, killing at least 13 lawyers (nine in Varanasi; four in Faizabad), and leaving over 50 injured. All three cities are in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where lawyers declared earlier this year they will not defend terrorist suspects. The explosives were apparently packed on parked bicycles at the court complexes. Authorities say they suspect militant groups trying to spark violence between India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority. Varanasi, Hinduism's holiest city, was the site of terror attacks on a Hindu temple and a train station last year. Faizabad is near the site of the attack on the Babri Mosque in 1992, which sparked widespread Hindu-Muslim riots. (Jurist, NDTV, Nov. 23)

The Iranian town of Boroujerd, Luristan province, is tense and divided following the Nov. 10 destruction of a hosseinieh or monastery belonging to the Gonabadi Sufi order by the police and Basij paramilitary forces. According to Mohsen Yahyavi, the conservative parliamentary representative for Boroujerd, the trouble began when Sufis abducted and beat several youths affiliated with a nearby mosque. The Sufis, however, tell a different story. One young female follower of the order told IPS: "Religious vigilantes had once before tried to bulldoze the hosseinieh and succeeded in destroying parts of its walls. This time on the night before the hosseinieh was completely destroyed, the Basij militia and the vigilantes staged a bogus attack on a nearby mosque where there was a gathering to criticize Sufi beliefs. The attack was then blamed on the Sufis to justify the attack on the hosseinieh."