A state of emergency has been declared in southern Kyrgyztsan following what authorities are portraying as ethnic violence. On May 19, several thousand ethnic Kyrgyz tried to storm a private university in Jalal-Abad that serves as a center of the minority Uzbek community, sparking a clash that left at least two people dead and more than 70 wounded. Witnesses said gunfire broke out as crowds approached the building encircled by a cordon of special security forces. It was not clear who opened fire, but health officials said most of the injured appeared to be from the crowd. Many see an effort to restore ousted president Kurmanbek Bakiyev behind the outburst.

The UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) announced May 22 that it has launched an investigation into the shootings of dozens of prisoners during a jail riot in Les Cayes, the country's third city, following the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Haitian police had blamed fighting among inmates for the deaths. Thousands of prisoners escaped from jails in Haiti in the chaos after the quake that killed more than 200,000.

Even as the disaster unfolds in the Gulf of Mexico, lawyers for BP and federal regulators are working to settle a civil suit the government brought in connection with the 2006 pipeline spills in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay oilfield. In papers BP and government lawyers jointly filed in US District Court in Anchorage recently, the two sides said they had "conducted extensive settlement discussions including...exchanging several drafts of various settlement constructs." Judge John Sedwick granted a motion to extend deadlines related to expert witness disclosure and discovery until near the end of the year.

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Timoteo Alejandro Ramírez, 44, leader of the Triqui indigenous "autonomous municipality" of San Juan Copala in Mexico's southern state of Oaxaca, was killed May 20 along with his wife Cleriberta Castro, 35. The attack took place in Yosoyuxi, a hamlet within municipality, where the couple lived. Witnesses said an unmarked truck stopped outside the couple's store, and an "armed commando" emerged and carried out the murders. A statement from the autonomous municipality said the commando was made up of four "non-Triqui individuals," but asserted that the Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULT) is responsible for the crime. Ramírez was leader of the rival Independent Movement for Triqui Unification and Struggle (MULTI, which established the autonomous municipality in 2007). (San Juan Copala Autonomous Municipality statement, May 22)

A reserve for uncontacted tribes in the remote Peruvian Amazon has been made off-limits to oil and gas companies. The decision was revealed May 21 at a promotional event held in London by Perupetro, the state company responsible for promoting oil and gas exploration in Peru. The vast majority of the reserve had been previously open to exploration by Brazilian company Petrobras, in an area known as Lot 110.

Following a cross-country march that converged on the capital from some 30 indigenous communities across Argentina, some 15,000 protesters established themselves in Buenos Aires' Plaza de Mayo on May 20, and are demanding a dialogue with the government on establishing a "pluricultural" state. The National March of Original Peoples comes just before Argentina celebrates its bicentennial Revolution Day on May 25, marking the beginning of the independence struggle from Spain in 1810. Dressed in colorful ponchos and other traditional garb, and carrying whipalas—the rainbow flag of South America's indigenous movement—many of the protesters had marched up to 2,000 kilometers. Representing the Wichi, Toba, Kolla, Mapuche, Huarpe and Guaraní peoples, among others, the protesters' first demand is for the recuperation of traditional lands. (BBC Mundo, La Jornada, Mexico; Informador, Mexico, May 21)

Two-time Honduran dictator Oswaldo López Arellano died over the weekend after being hospitalized for several weeks. He was 89. Born in Danlí in eastern Honduras, López Arellano would lead two coups d'état as an army officer. In October 1963, López, then a colonel, ousted President José Ramón Villeda of the Liberal Party, when was just months from finishing his six-year term in office. In 1965, with the backing of the currently ruling National Party, López took office as constitutional president and handed over power in 1971 to Ramón Ernesto Cruz—only to oust him in a second coup in December 1972.