Inspired by the Arab Spring, protesters in Swaziland are calling for King Mswati III—Africa’s last absolute monarch—to allow multi-party democracy and rescind salary cuts to public employees. The king has not responded publicly, but his army and police have unleashed a heavy crackdown, including preemptive arrests of labor leaders, journalists, and student activists, as well as the use of tear gas and water cannons on the streets. On April 13, the third day of protests, labor and student leaders announced a pause in the campaign to rethink their strategy, but some warned against backing down. "You can choose, if you want to, to end the protests and in the process send a clear a message to your government that ... the best way to deal with protests is clubs and tear gas," the Swaziland Support Network (SSN) in a statement. "The alternative is fighting back." (CSM, April 14)

At least seven people were killed, including four police officers who clashed with a dissident army unit, as hundreds of thousands of anti-regime protesters rallied across Yemen on April 13. The police apparently attacked an army checkpoint maintained by dissident troops in Amran province, The targeted army unit operates under the commander of northwest Yemen's military region, Gen. Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, who has closed ranks with the protest movement and accused regime supporters of trying to assassinate him. In the southern the port city of Aden, soldiers shot dead two protesters and wounded nine others. The army apparently opened fire as protesters tried to set up roadblocks to enforce a general strike, which they have vowed to stage in Aden every Saturday and Wednesday until President Ali Abdullah Saleh's fall. Security officials said some of the protesters were armed, and included supporters of both the anti-Saleh parliamentary bloc, Common Forum, and the secessionist Southern Movement. (Middle East Online, April 13)

Workers at two major industrial enterprises in Iran's southern province of Khuzestan are on strike, according to a report on Radio Farda, Persian-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The report says some 1,500 employees of the Imam Port Petrochemical Complex have been staging gatherings in front of the company headquarters since April 9 to demand their work contracts be concluded directly with the plant's management rather than with contractors. The Free Union of Workers in Iran told Radio Farda that 1,000 workers at the Pars Paper Mill in southwestern Iran similarly launched a strike on April 9, protesting the dismissal of 60 workers who were on temporary contracts with the factory. (RFE/RL, April 12)

A federal jury in El Paso, Texas, acquitted Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "asset" Luis Posada Carriles of 11 counts of fraud and obstruction of justice on April 8, handing US prosecutors their latest defeat in a case that dates back to Posada's illegal entry into the US in 2005. The judge in the case, US district judge Kathleen Cardone, threw out one set of immigration fraud charges in 2007; two years later, US prosecutors filed the new set of charges based on Posada's allegedly lying to immigration officers about his terrorist activities in the past.

On April 5, five days late, Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) announced the preliminary results from the March 20 presidential and legislative runoff elections. According to the official count, popular singer Michel Martelly ("Sweet Micky," Peasant Response) defeated Mirlande Hyppolite Manigat (Coalition of National Progressive Democrats, RDNP) by 67.57% to 31.74% in the race for president. Turnout was reported at 23%, about the same as in the first round, on Nov. 28, although Martelly claims it was 30%. The CEP is to announce the final results on April 16, and the new president takes office on May 14.

US officials were wrong in 1979 when they thought that the struggle against drug trafficking was "a question that only had to do with complying with the law," one "that could be resolved quickly with an aggressive campaign" and with a "country by country" approach, William R. Brownfield, US assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told a press conference in Cancún, in the eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, on April 7. "Thirty-two years have passed, billions of dollars and many strategies later," he said, "and I could tell you that we weren't right, we didn't guess right."

Declassified internal documents from the Cincinnati-based banana company Chiquita Brands International made public on April 7 indicate that the multinational's Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, had a much closer relation with leftist rebels and rightwing paramilitaries than Chiquita has admitted in the past. Chiquita agreed in March 2007 to pay the US government $25 million in fines for supporting the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), which the US designated as a terrorist group, but the company insisted that Banadex only gave the AUC money to keep it from attacking Chiquita employees; the company said it had also paid off two leftist guerrilla organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), for the same reason.

In Colombia's largest demonstration since President Juan Manuel Santos took office last August, tens of thousands of unionists, students and teachers demonstrated throughout the country on April 7 to protest a free trade agreement (FTA) with the US and proposed changes in the education system that they say will lead to privatization. The Unitary Workers Central (CUT), Colombia's main labor federation, estimated turnout at 1.5 million. Demonstrations took place in Bogotá, Medellín, Cali, Bucaramanga, Santa Marta, Barranquilla and other cities.