From April 2 to April 3 hundreds of indigenous Chortí blocked access to Copán archeological park, probably Honduras' most important ancient Mayan site, to press demands for land. Tourism minister Ricardo Martínez said the protesters agreed to leave after the government offered to start negotiations on April 15. An estimated 400 European and US tourists visit Copán a day, each paying a $15 entrance fee.

Three masked men kidnapped Guatemalan attorney and university professor Gladys Monterroso on March 25 as she was eating breakfast in a restaurant in Guatemala City and held her for 13 hours before leaving her on a street in the Atlántida neighborhood. She said the men burned her with cigarettes, beat her and subjected her to sexual and psychological abuse; at one point they put a pistol in her mouth and said they would kill her. They didn't demand a ransom.

In an op-ed in the March 31 New York Times, United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon announced economic development plans for Haiti based on the expansion of "free-trade zones" (FTZs), industrial parks for tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export (maquiladoras). Ban said this will enable Haiti to take advantage of 2008 US legislation known as HOPE II, which gives Haiti duty-free, quota-free access to US markets for nine years.

Medical professionals violated codes of medical ethics by participating in and assisting in ill-treatment of Guantánamo Bay detainees, says a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, made public April 6. The report, which was written in 2007 based on interviews of fourteen detainees, alleges that doctors and psychologists in Guantánamo at times stopped waterboarding and other forms of ill-treatment, and at other times modified the severity of the treatment to allow it to continue.

Last year it was the oil shock. This year it's the econo-cataclysm. Either way, there's a lesson here. But how many people are going to get it? From AP, April 6:

WASHINGTON — U.S. highway deaths in 2008 fell to their lowest level in nearly 50 years, the latest government figures show, as the recession and $4 per gallon gas meant people drove less to save more.

US drone attacks on Pakistan's northwestern borderlands are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, officials in Islamabad claimed after a new attack April 4 killed 13 people. The officials say up to 1 million people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape the US missile attacks as well as bombings by the Pakistani army.

Pakistan's newly re-instated chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has called a court hearing into a video in circulation showing the public flogging of a teenage girl in the northwestern Swat Valley, where a peace-for-sharia deal has been brokered with local Taliban leaders. He has ordered top officials from North West Frontier Province to appear and produce the girl, who is shown in the video being held down by two men while a third hits her with a strap as she cries out in pain.

The US Navy April 3 reassigned Lieutenant Commander William Kuebler, a military lawyer who had been in charge of defending Guantánamo detainee Omar Khadr, after Kuebler filed a formal complaint against a military official overseeing the case. Kuebler had worked on the case for two years before he was fired after alleging that the military's chief Guantanamo defense lawyer, Colonel Peter Masciola, had a conflict of interest in overseeing the case. Kuebler said Masciola should be removed from the case because Masciola said Khadr should also face civil liability for the alleged killing of a US soldier, despite his role overseeing Khadr's defense. Khadr is the only Canadian citizen currently being held in Guantanamo, and Canadian officials have said they may investigate the circumstances surrounding Kuebler's removal.