The week at a glance...Americas

Mexico City

Biggest dump closes: Mexico City this week closed its main dump, Bordo Poniente, one of the world’s largest open-air landfills, where the trash is piled more than 50 feet deep. In its heyday, the dump received 12,000 tons of trash every day in a nonstop procession of hundreds of garbage trucks. By this year, though, that figure had been halved, as the city opened new recycling and composting facilities. Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said the closure would significantly reduce the city’s greenhouse-gas emissions. He said the city would establish a plant to capture the methane gas given off by the dump and turn it into energy.

Lima, Peru

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Lori Berenson leaves: American Lori Berenson, convicted of terrorism in the 1990s, has left Peru with her toddler son. Berenson, who was freed on parole last year after spending 15 years in Peruvian prisons, was allowed to leave the country to visit her family in New York for Christmas. Berenson had admitted helping the Túpac Amaru rebel group rent a house where authorities found weapons after a shoot-out with the rebels, but she said she didn’t know guns were stored there and was not a member of the terrorist group. U.S. legal experts found the sentence harsh given the thin evidence against her, but most Peruvians regard her as a terrorist. Berenson said she plans to return to Peru, where she is required to stay for several more years of parole.