Popular Haitian singer Michel Martelly ("Sweet Micky") was sworn in as his country's 56th president on the morning of May 14 in a ceremony attended by outgoing president René Préval, members of Parliament and a group of foreign dignitaries, including Dominican Leonel Fernández, Honduran president Porfirio Lobo, Surinamese president Desiré Bouterse and former US president Bill Clinton. The event was held in a temporary structure set up in downtown Port-au-Prince for the Parliament after a January 2010 earthquake destroyed much of the capital. The actual administration of the oath of office took place without electric lights or a working sound system because of a brief power outage in the building. (AlterPresse, Haiti, May 14; Radio Kiskeya, Haiti, May 14; Radio Métropole, Haiti, May 14)

As of May 12 a group of Haitians left homeless by a massive January 2010 earthquake were facing possible expulsion from their displaced persons' camp at the Palais de l'Art, in Delmas 33 in the northeast of Port-au-Prince. A lawyer for the property's owner said he was asking the Interior Ministry to remove the camp residents within eight days. The residents reported that the owner had already started harassing them: on May 9 they found the doors to the toilets locked, and on May 10 the front gate was locked, trapping them in the camp. More than 150 families have been living at the site, according to the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS).

A federal court in Resistencia, capital of Argentina's northern Chaco province, sentenced eight former army officers to life imprisonment May 16 for their role in the Margarita Belén massacre, named for the nearby town where 22 unarmed political prisoners were tortured and killed on Dec. 13, 1976. The 22—including several women who were raped before being shot to death—were members or sympathizers of the Montoneros guerilla group. The military had long maintained that the victims were armed rebels who had ambushed a patrol. But testimony and forensic investigations determined they had been rounded up unarmed and driven to the outskirts of town, where their remains were buried. Five of the bodies have still not been found.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo announced May 16 that he is seeking arrest warrants for Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi and two others in his "inner circle" on charges of crimes against humanity. Ocampo said his office has gathered evidence that Qaddafi, his son Saif al-Islam and his brother-in-law Abdullah al-Sanussi plotted together to orchestrate attacks on civilians. He said al-Islam was acting as a "de facto Prime Minister" and called al-Sanussi, Qaddafi's "right-hand man" and "executioner." Ocampo said his office was almost prepared for trial, having collected quality testimony from some who have fled Libya. Ocampo said:

A two-year study released last week by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) of a massive trove of data on the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) seized in a raid by the Colombian military two years ago accuses Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez of collaboration with the guerilla movement, winning sensational headlines across Latin America. The archive of electronic documents apparently included the personal files and correspondence of FARC commander Raúl Reyes, who was killed in the same raid. Entitled "The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador and the Secret Archive of Raúl Reyes," the report charges that Chávez allowed the FARC "to use Venezuelan territory for refuge, cross-border operations and political activity, and effectively assigned the group a role in Venezuelan civil society." Chávez even subsidized a FARC office in Caracas, the study asserts.

Guatemalan authorities announced May 15 the discovery of 27 bodies—all but one decapitated—at a ranch known as Los Cocos in La Libertad municipality of the northern jungle department of Petén. The Public Ministry and National Civil Police (PNC) said the victims were farmworkers who were massacred by a narco-trafficking cell known as "Z-200," believed to be an arm of the Mexico-based criminal paramilitary network Los Zetas. The PNC was alerted to the ranch by local campesinos, and found the bodies spread out on the patio. Only six have thus far been identified.

President Barack Obama announced May 14 that he is ordering the Interior Department to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, and speed up seismic work that is a precursor to drilling off the South and mid-Atlantic coasts. In his radio address, Obama said he would also extend oil company leases in both Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico—where work was delayed by the drilling moratorium imposed during last year's devastating Deepwater Horizon oil spill. He said he is also ordering the Interior Department to hold a Gulf of Mexico lease sale this year and two in 2012, thereby completing the department’s five-year plan for the area. (WP, May 14)

Persistent rumors that private Israeli security companies are recruiting mercenaries for embattled Libyan dictator Moammar Qaddafi were given new credence by a May 2 report on the Zurich-based International Relations and Security Network (ISN) website. Although the report itself cites unnamed "reports," it for the first time names a particular Israeli firm which is said to have been contracted by the afflicted Tripoli regime: