An officer of the Saudi religious police, patrolling an amusement park in the eastern city of al-Mubarraz for unmarried couples illegally socializing, met physical resistance after he stopped a young couple walking together. The officer of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice—known locally as the Hai'a—asked the couple to confirm their identities and relationship to one another. For unknown reasons, the young man collapsed upon being questioned by the cop. According to the Saudi daily Okaz, the woman then laid into the officer, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be hospitalized with bruises across his body and face.

A May 20 US Forces-Afghanistan press release states that military officials have launched a criminal investigation into allegations that a "small number of US soldiers were responsible for the unlawful deaths of as many as three Afghan civilians." The investigations also include allegations of illegal drug use, assault and conspiracy. No charges have been brought yet, but one soldier has been placed in pre-trial confinement.

The government of Thailand on May 19 imposed a curfew on Bangkok and other areas of the country even as leaders of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, also known as the Red Shirts, announced an end to the two-month long conflict in Bangkok and surrendered to police. Members of the Red Shirts, known for supporting ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, refused to accept the end of the demonstrations and began setting fire to parts of Bangkok.

Mexican President Felipe Calderón, speaking at the US Congress during a visit to Washington May 20, urged legislators to reinstate an assault-weapon ban, saying violence in Mexico escalated when the ban expired six years ago. "There is one area where Mexico needs your help, that is stopping the flow of assault weapons and other deadly weapons across the border," Calderón said. "Let us work together to end this lethal trade that threatens Mexico and your own people." (Bloomberg, May 20)

National Public Radio on May 18 adds to the widespread speculation that the Mexican government is tilting to the Sinaloa Cartel in the country's increasingly violent narco wars. Reporting from Ciudad Juárez, where President Felipe Calderón has deployed 10,000 army troops and federal police, NPR "finds strong evidence that Mexico's drug fight is rigged," citing court testimony, current and former law enforcement officials, and an analysis of cartel arrests.

Retired Mexican army general Mario Arturo Acosta Chaparro was gravely wounded with a bullet to the throat in what police are calling a mugging attempt in the Federal District's Cuauhtémoc division May 18. By official accounts, Acosta Chaparro was shot multiple times in his car by an assailant trying to steal his watch, and driven to a hospital by his chauffeur. Police are said to have arrested a suspect. However, there is much speculation about a link to Mexico's ongoing narco wars. In 2007, Acosta Chaparro was investigated by both the Prosecutor General of the Republic (PGR) and Prosecutor for Military Justice (PJM) for ties to Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the late kingpin of the Juárez Cartel. The general was cleared in one of the most high-profile cases of military corruption in recent Mexican history. (El Universal, May 19)

On May 7 the management of the Limón and Moín ports on Costa Rica's Atlantic coast signed an agreement with the de facto leadership of the dockworkers union to distribute $137 million among 1,400 workers as compensation for the privatization of the ports. The agreement ends a nearly four-year struggle against the government's plan to sell off the Board of Port Administration and Economic Development of the Atlantic Shelf (JAPDEVA), which manages the two ports. In January the leftist leadership of the JAPDEVA Workers Union (SINTRAJAP) was replaced in what the union leaders called a "coup d'état," paving the way for the privatization agreement. Negotiating the accord was the last act of Álvaro González, labor minister in the administration of former president Oscar Arias, whose term ended on May 8; he was succeeded by President Laura Chinchilla Miranda, a member of Arias' National Liberation Party (PLN). (La Nación, Costa Rica, May 11)

The Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán (MUCA) reported that during the week of May 10 police and military forcibly removed campesinos from at least four cooperatives in the northern Atlantic region of Honduras. The police evicted campesinos from the San Isidro cooperative on May 10 and left about 100 agents at the site to keep the campesinos from returning. On May 12 security guards working for landowners René Morales and Miguel Facussé, along with some 60 police agents and soldiers, removed campesinos from the El Despertar in the Aguán River Valley, according to one of the campesinos. The Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH) reported that police and soldiers evacuated the San Esteban and Trinidad cooperatives on May 13.