On Aug. 6 the three main Honduran labor federations held a march in Tegucigalpa marking the start of an open-ended general strike against the de facto government formed when a June 28 coup removed president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from office. The strike was timed to coincide with eight coordinated marches by grassroots organizations that began on Aug. 5 with the goal of bringing tens of thousands of coup opponents from around the country to Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the second largest city, on Aug. 11. A delegation from the Organization of American States (OAS) is scheduled to visit Honduras that day for discussions with de facto officials and others.

The Chamber of Deputies of Haiti's Parliament voted 55-6 late on the evening of Aug. 4 to increase the country's minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 150 gourdes ($3.73). Three deputies abstained, and about 20 walked out before the vote, apparently protesting what they considered irregularities in the secret balloting.

Leaders of the Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) and the National Union of Nursing Services (UNASED) announced on Aug. 7 that Dominican medical workers would continue a strike they started on July 29 for at least another five days, until 6 AM on Aug. 13. The strike is the latest development in an 18-month struggle around a demand for a monthly minimum wage of 58,400 pesos ($1,624) for medical professionals.

Two groups that regularly protest the US ban on most travel to Cuba by making unauthorized trips to the island returned to the US without incident on Aug. 3 after their latest visits, the first since US president Barack Obama took office. About 140 members of the Venceremos Brigade walked from Canada into the US at Buffalo wearing orange T-shirts and chanting for an end to US sanctions, while some 130 members of the US/Cuba Friendshipment Caravan returned to the US at the Hidalgo International Bridge from Reynosa, Mexico. US Customs and Border Protection agents gave the travelers no trouble even though they said they had been in Cuba.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez announced Aug. 8 he is sending his ambassador back to Bogotá—while not formally re-establishing relations or backing down from opposing Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's plan to open the country's military bases to a bigger US presence. "The decision to freeze relations with Uribe's government remains," Chávez told reporters. "We have plenty of reasons to be highly concerned." Chávez told Ambassador Gustavo Marquez to return 11 days after he was ordered home. (AP, Aug. 10) However, the next day, Chávez accused Colombian soldiers of crossing into his country. "We are not talking about a patrol with a few soldiers that strayed over a border," Chávez said on his weekly television show Aug. 9. "These troops crossed the Orinoco River in a boat and carried out an incursion into Venezuelan territory... When our troops got there [the Colombian troops] had already gone away." (AlJazeera, Aug. 10)

The five generals who lead the Honduran armed forces made a rare appearance on national television Aug. 4 to explain their role in the ouster of President Manuel Zelaya. They repeated that they did not act to take sides in the political fight that has polarized the country, but out of obedience to the law, and that history would judge them as patriots. They denied that they acted in the interests of an "oligarchy." They said that Zelaya was acting on behalf of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, and had become a threat to democracy throughout the hemisphere. Said Gen. Miguel Ángel Garcia Padget: "Central America was not the objective of this communism disguised as democracy. This socialism, communism, chávismo, we could call it, was headed to the heart of the United States."

From the Washington Blade, July 31:

A fundraising event to benefit an LGBT community center in Lebanon last week took a surprise turn when stunned audience members were shown graphic photographs of beheaded corpses and images purportedly depicting U.S. soldiers preparing to execute gay Iraqis.

On July 27, Stavros Vitalis, representing the Panhellenic Macedonian Front, filed a libel suit against Greek journalist Takis Michas, author of Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic's Serbia. Michas' book and work in the daily Eleftherotypia accuse Greek mercenaries in Bosnia of participating in the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre. In a media statement, Vitalis said that the Greek volunteers who fought in Bosnia under the command of Gen. Ratko Mladic were there to help the Serbs, "who were being slaughtered by international gangs that were also stealing their houses, their country and their dignity."