Some 100 members of the 19th US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, an annual shipment of humanitarian aid organized by the New York-based group Pastors for Peace, arrived in Havana on July 5. Reverend Lucius Walker led the delegation, which was met at the José Martí International Airport by Communist Party and religious leaders. Pastors for Peace has been collecting and shipping aid to Cuba since 1992. To challenge the 46-year-old US trade embargo against Cuba, the group refuses to request a license from the US Treasury Department for the shipment.

On June 12 Haiti's Chamber of Deputies voted 57-22 with six abstentions to reject President Rene Garcia Preval's latest nominee for prime minister, Robert Manuel. A commission assigned to study Manuel's qualifications found that he failed to meet two requirements in the 1987 Constitution: he didn't own property in Haiti and he hadn't lived in the country for the last five years consecutively. Manuel is a longtime friend of Preval and was the security chief during Preval's first term as president (1996-2001). The Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide pushed for Manuel's removal in 1999, and he left the country, returning near the end of 2005.

Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a brief official visit to Haiti on May 28. During the few hours before he headed off for a tour of Central America, Lula had a private conversation with Haitian president Rene Garcia Preval, took part in a signing ceremony for six agreements (including accords on agriculture, education and women's rights), and visited the headquarters of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a 9,000-member military force headed by Brazil.

More than 1,000 people, mostly peasants, marched through the streets of Savanette, near the Dominican border in Haiti's Central Plateau region, on May 19 to protest the local government's failure to issue proper identity papers. The march also commemorated the 88th anniversary of the assassination of Benoit Batraville ("Ti Benwa"), the commander of the KAKO peasant army, which fought against a 1915-1934 military occupation by the US.

The Jesuit Service for Refugees and Migrants reports that at least 1,693 Haitians were deported from the Dominican Republic in the first four months of 2008. The mass repatriations are "almost always marked by violations of the migrants' human rights," the group said, noting that some immigrants reported that soldiers released the Haitians who could afford to pay bribes. (Adital, May 9)

Foreign troops and not Haitian demonstrators killed Spanish journalist Ricardo Ortega in Port-au-Prince during a protest on March 7, 2004, according to the reporter's family. Haitian judge Bernard Saint-Vil has dismissed charges against the Haitian suspects in the killing, Ortega's parents, Jose Luis and Charo Ortega, told the media in Madrid on May 9; Saint-Vil reportedly blamed the foreign soldiers deployed in the country during the three months after then-president Jean Bertrand Aristide was removed from office on Feb. 29, 2004.

The US Navy plans to re-establish its Fourth Fleet, disbanded in 1950, to oversee ships, aircraft and submarines operating in the Caribbean and Central and South America. Rear Admiral Joseph Kernan, current commander of the Naval Special Warfare Command, will lead the fleet effective July 1, Admiral Gary Roughead, chief of naval operations, said in a statement. The fleet will be based in Mayport, FLA, coordinating with the US Naval Forces Southern Command, which also is based there. "This change increases our emphasis in the region on employing naval forces to build confidence and trust among nations through collective maritime security efforts that focus on common threats and mutual interests," Roughead said. (Bloomberg, April 24)

At least 20 Haitians fleeing their impoverished homeland were killed when their boat went down off the Bahamas April 20, leaving only three known survivors—including an alleged migrant smuggler from Honduras, according to the US Coast Guard (AP, April 22) The news comes as World Food Program chief Josette Sheeran called soaring global food prices a "silent tsunami," warning that hundreds of millions worldwide are facing famine. (Radio Netherlands, April 23)