Walter Trochez, 25, a well-known LGBT activist in Honduras who was an active member of the National Resistance Front against the coup d'etat there, was assassinated on the evening of Dec. 13, shot dead by drive-by killers in central Tegucigalpa. Trochez, who had already been arrested and beaten after participating in a march against the coup, had been very active recently in documenting and publicizing homophobic killings and crimes committed by the forces behind the coup. He had been trailed for weeks before his murder by thugs believed to be members of the state security forces.

Students at North American campuses are demanding that their universities drop licensing agreements with the Oregon-based Nike, Inc sportswear manufacturer unless 1,800 workers for two Nike contractors in Honduras get legally mandated back pay and severance packages worth more than $2 million. Officials at Purdue University in Indiana announced on Dec. 2 that they were reviewing the situation, and on Dec. 7 University of Wisconsin-Madison chancellor Biddy Martin said she was giving Nike four months to clear up problems with alleged labor abuses.

The US-based Colombia Support Network (CSN) reported on Dec. 10 that for the last several weeks Colombian human rights attorney Jorge Eliécer Molano-Rodríguez had "received worrisome visits to his apartment building by individuals who refused to give their names to the building watchman, and his companion has been stalked by strange men.... Molano's legal work has involved him in some of Colombia's most controversial cases, representing, among others, families of victims of the Palace of Justice murders; of the Feb. 21, 2005 massacre of members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó; and of the Army's 'false positives' kidnapping and murder of civilian youths in San José de Guaviare, and in Bolivar and Cesar departments."

Right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera led the presidential race in Chile's general elections on Dec. 13 with about 44% of the vote, followed by the candidate of the ruling center-left Concertation coalition, the Christian Democratic former president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000), with about 30%. The two candidates will face each other in a runoff on Jan. 17, with both seeking votes from supporters of former Socialist deputy Marco Enríquez Ominami, who came in third with 20%; he has refused to endorse either of the front-runners. Jorge Arrate of the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh), in fourth place with 5% of the vote, threw his support to Frei after the voting on Dec. 13. (Agence France Presse, Dec. 14)

On Dec. 7 the US Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging two former Haitian officials, two former executives of an unnamed Florida telecommunications company and the president of Florida-based Telecom Consulting Services Corp with foreign bribery, wire fraud and money laundering. According to the indictment, the telecommunications company paid more than $800,000 to shell companies to be used for bribes to officials of Haiti's state-owned telecommunications company, Télécommunications d'Haiti (Haiti Téléco). Two other Florida executives pleaded guilty to related charges last spring. The right-wing Haitian daily Le Matin reported that the unnamed Florida company was Terra Telecommunications Corporation.

According to former employees of the Stella D'oro Biscuit Co. in New York City, CITGO, the US subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA) oil monopoly, attempted to buy the company's Bronx plant in early October to save the jobs of 136 unionized workers but the Connecticut-based private equity firm that owned the company ignored the offer. The facility was closed on Oct. 8.

On Dec. 9 the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an influential Washington, DC-based think tank, released "Rethinking Trade Policy for Development: Lessons From Mexico Under NAFTA," a study on the effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement and related neoliberal economic policies on Mexico's economy. The study found that in the period since the agreement went into effect in 1994, Mexico's annual per capital growth rate has been slow (1.6% in 1992-2007, compared to 3.5% in 1960-1979) and job growth has been weak, with net losses in agriculture and manufacturing (except for the export-oriented maquiladora sector).

A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia Dec. 14 denied Yemeni Guantánamo Bay detainee Musa'ab Al-Madhwani's petition for habeas corpus, ruling that the government may continue to detain him. Judge Thomas Hogan excluded from evidence statements made to interrogators, finding them to be the product of abusive techniques, but admitted statements made during military hearings because they were given years after the alleged abuse. Hogan found that while he does not believe that Madhwani poses a threat, the government met its burden of proving that he was a member of al-Qaeda. Madhwani has been detained at Guantánamo since October 2002.