Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on April 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d'eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.

Six striking doctors were lightly injured on April 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren't serious, he added, but "the consequences could have been greater." The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn't have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.

On the morning of April 16 at least 200 indigenous Yashínanka and Yines occupied the airport in Atalaya, capital of Atalaya province, Ucayali region, in Peru's Amazonian area. The Inter-Ethnic Association for Development of the Peruvian Forest (AIDESEP) had been leading a strike since April 13 (or earlier, according to one source) around demands for the repair of environmental damage and for an end to illegal cutting and to the granting of land for mining and oil drilling without consultation with the local communities. The protesters also demanded that the government drop the proposed Law 840/2006, known as the "Law of the Forest," which would increase private investment in the development of state-owned forests.

The US Supreme Court April 20 heard oral arguments in Iraq v. Beaty and Iraq v. Simon, two cases that will determine whether Iraq has sovereign immunity from the jurisdiction of US courts in cases involving misdeeds that occurred during the Saddam Hussein regime. The plaintiffs in both cases sued the Iraqi government, alleging that they were detained and tortured during the 1990s Gulf War.

President Barack Obama, making his first trip to CIA headquarters April 20, acknowledged that agency officials had expressed what he called "understandable anxiety and concern" about his decision to release confidential memos detailing brutal interrogation techniques used by agency operatives. Obama said it was time to admit "mistakes" and "move forward." Among other things, the memos revealed that two captured al-Qaeda operatives—Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—were subjected to waterboarding a total of 266 times.

Hamas authorities should end the systematic detention, torture, and execution of political opponents and suspected Israeli collaborators in the Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report issued April 20. HRW said at least 32 Palestinians have been killed and several dozen more maimed in a wave of violent persecution since the start of the recent Israeli military offensive in December.

Several hundred demonstrated in Tel Aviv April 18 to protest the killing of a Palestinian activist in the West Bank town of Bil'in the previous day. The march, attended by Hadash MK Dov Khenin, culminated across from the Ministry of Defense offices, where protesters denounced both the IDF and the government. Participants carried signs bearing slogans such as "Uniformed Killers," "Arab Blood Isn't Second-Rate" and "Blood Government, Get Out of the Occupied Territories." Said a statement from the organizers: "The occupying forces have recently escalated their attacks on demonstrators protesting the separation fence." (Haartez, April 18)

Pope Benedict's decision to send a Vatican delegation to Geneva for the UN conference on racism has opened a new rift with Jewish groups. "By participating, the Vatican has given its endorsement to what is being prepared there," Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, told the Italian newspaper La Stampa, referring to fears that the conference would become an anti-Israel platform. Di Segni said the pope's decision was "the latest imprudent step" in his relations with Jews, which were severely strained earlier this year over the pope's decision to lift the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust.