On Sept. 8 Haitian president Michel Martelly announced the formation of a Presidential Advisory Council for Economic Development and Investment as part of a "strategic vision" that he claims will create 500,000 jobs over the next three years. The council is to help his administration "remove the brakes on investment to free up Haitian growth," Martelly said. The council's two co-directors will be former US president Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and Laurent Lamothe, the president of the South Africa-based telecommunications company Global Voice Group. Three former heads of state are on the council in addition to Clinton: former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar (1996-2004), former Jamaican prime minister Percival Patterson (1992-2006) and former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010). Aznar and Uribe are both rightists who, like Clinton, are strong proponents of neoliberal economic policies; Patterson is a moderate social democrat.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Sept. 8 announced its findings from a three-year investigation that the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD) has engaged in repeated unlawful and unconstitutional behavior. The investigation, which began in June 2008, uncovered the PRPD use of excessive and unreasonable force, failure to protect First Amendment rights, and unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests. In its executive summary report (PDF), the DoJ acknowledged that the rights violations corresponded with a period of increased crime and pressure on the PRPD. However, such circumstances did not excuse the misconduct:

Puerto Rican independence activist Hilton Fernández Diamante has charged that in June, US federal agents planted an electronic device in his car while it was parked in the apartment tower complex where he lives in Trujillo Alto, south of San Juan. Photographs, an eyewitness account and statements by the apartment complex's management confirm that people who identified themselves as Puerto Rican police agents were in the parking area while Fernández Diamante was in New York to meet with a lawyer. Told about the suspicious activity on his return, Fernández Diamante called the Puerto Rican police's bomb squad on June 15. Police agents evacuated the area and removed the device.

As of Sept. 2 it appeared that some of the 1,100 Uruguayan troops in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) were about to be repatriated because of accusations of sex abuse at a base in the southern coastal town of Port-Salut. Eliane Nabaa, who handles communication and information for the United Nations military and police occupation force in Haiti, told the Haitian internet news service AlterPresse on Sept. 1 that repatriation was a possibility. On Sept. 2 an Uruguayan website said the soldiers would be sent home in the coming week.

Residents of Kington's poor district of Tivoli Gardens reacted with shock and disbelief to the news that extradited accused drug kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke arranged a plea bargain this week at Federal District Court in Manhattan. "I'm devastated," one anonymous member of the Coke clan told the Jamaica Gleaner. Scores were killed in days of street-fighting in the district last year as police and army troops were deployed to hunt down Coke for extradition to the US. But in the end he cut a deal in which he pleaded guilty to trafficking large quantities of marijuana and cocaine, and approving the stabbing of a marijuana dealer in the Bronx in 2007, who apparently survived. Five murder charges that could have landed him life in prison were dropped. Coke faces a maximum term of 23 years; the plea deal does not require him to cooperate or testify on behalf of the government in any proceeding. (NYT, Jamaica Gleaner, Sept. 1)

A comparison that Danish and US researchers have made of the whole genomes of cholera bacteria found in patients in Haiti and in Nepal provides nearly conclusive evidence that Nepalese soldiers in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) were the inadvertent cause of a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 6,000 Haitians. The genomes are "practically identical," Harvard University microbiologist John Mekalanos told the magazine Science. "This is as close as you can come to molecular proof."

Students from the Faculty of Ethnology of the State University of Haiti (UEH) set up barricades at the nearby Champ de Mars, Port-au-Prince's main park, early in August to protest what they said was an increase in crime in the area. The protests started after an ethnology student, Philibert Sergo, was killed in a robbery in July. According to police inspector Dupont Joseph, 23 armed robberies were reported in the zone in June and July, although he said the number was declining.

The supreme court of Cuba (officially, the Supreme Popular Tribunal) on Aug. 5 upheld a 15-year sentence for Alan Gross, a US citizen accused of "acts against the independence or integrity of the state." Gross was arrested in 2009 and has served 20 months of his sentence for his work as a consultant for Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI), a business that contracts with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Gross claims that he was aiding the Cuban Jewish community to achieve unfiltered Internet access by distributing various communications devices, while the Cuban government alleges that he was creating internal networks to foment protests on behalf of the US government.