From the Associated Press:

BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 27 Colombia insisted Friday that a false-passport ring it dismantled may have links to al-Qaida and Hamas, despite U.S. doubts about the counterfeiters' connection to the terrorist groups.

Colombian officials said Thursday the gang supplied citizens from Pakistan, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt and other countries with false passports and Colombian nationality without them ever setting foot in the country.

A letter sent to the Colombia Support Network in Madison, WI, from local campesino activsts in Putumayo, Colombia's Amazon rainforest department bordering Ecuador:

Mocoa, January 25, 2006

Beginning in December of 2005 the FARC-EP began a series of attacks upon the infrastructure of the Department of Putumayo, choosing different points supposedly to weaken the present government, among them the towers which take high voltage electricity to Putumayo communities, bridges on different roads and oil wells and the trans-Andean pipeline.

In the space of 15 days they dynamited electric towers twelve times, oil wells five times, dynamiting every 800 meters the pipeline which transports crude oil between a site in Orito denominated El Guarumo and the police station of Santana near Puerto Asis. And they dynamited bridges and roads in three places.

Two Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the border crossing (port of entry) in Douglas, Arizona shot and killed a driver on the night of Feb. 9 after Douglas police officers attempted to stop the man. Apparently trying to pass through the port of entry into Mexico, the driver maneuvered lanes and drove a stolen F-250 pick up into a port booth. "Because of the threat to their lives, the officers took necessary action and each fired one shot," said CBP spokesperson Brian Levin. CBP has not released any information on the driver, but said he died while being transported to a local hospital. ICE is investigating the shooting. The two agents involved in the incident have been placed on paid administrative leave. (KVOA.com; Arizona Republic, Feb. 10)

The final pair of missionaries from New Tribes Mission pulled out of their Venezuelan outposts Feb. 9, days ahead of their deadline, after being accused of espionage by President Hugo Chavez. The nearly 40 missionaries, some having worked for 59 years among the remote tribes of Venezuela, returned to their base in Puerto Ordaz. Chavez told reporters that the missionaries left their settlements peacefully, "without any kind of violence or outrage and the National Armed Force occupied that huge territory of imperialist penetration."

A petition, dated Feb. 9:

To: Kurdish Authorities

Campaign to defend the life and safety of Marywan Halabjaye

Defend this secular writer against the threats of Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan!

Marywan Halabjaye is secular Kurdish write who recently published a Book entitled Sex, Sharia and Women in the History of Islam. In this book he discussed the status of women in Islam and according to the text of the Quran. The book has received an overwhelming response from the secular, progressive masses of Kurdistan.

Violence continues to grow throughout the Muslim world in protests against the anti-Islamic cartoons published in Denmark. In Nairobi, police opened fire as hundreds of protesters advanced on the Danish ambassador's residence, leaving one injured. Another was killed and four more injured in an apparent accident involving the ambulance taking the wounded protester away. (AP, Feb. 10) A German journalist from ARD Radio was also reportedly assaulted by protesters in Nairobi, and had his car windows smashed as he tried to leave the scene. (Expatica, Feb. 10)

From AP, Feb. 9:

A suicide bomber struck Thursday in Pakistan on the holiest festival for Shiite Muslims, triggering a riot that left a provincial town in flames and at least 27 people dead and more than 50 wounded.

An informative and insightful, if somewhat problematic, commentary from Egypt's Al-Ahram Weekly. Anjali Kamat argues that the cartoons are not merely "offensive" but propagandistic, and that leaving racism out of the simplistic "free speech/Islamic intolerance" equation is to miss the critical point: