Hundreds of supporters of Puerto Rican independence gathered at the Ateneo Puertorriqueño, one of the island's oldest cultural centers, in San Juan on Aug. 2 to commemorate Dolores ("Lolita") Lebrón Sotomayor. Lebrón, who died the day before of cardiovascular complications at the age of 90, led an armed attack on the US Congress on March 1, 1954, and spent 25 years and six months in a US prison before being pardoned in 1979 by US president Jimmy Carter (1977-1981). She was a "mythic figure," Rubén Berríos, president of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), told the Spanish wire service EFE. "Lolita's death wasn't a death, because she will never be forgotten," said former prisoner Rafael Cancel Miranda, one of the five participants in the attack. "The person who hasn't left anything behind is forgotten."

Russell Defreitas and Abdul Kadir, two men charged with plotting to blow up targets at New York's John F. Kennedy Airport, were found guilty of conspiracy charges Aug. 3 by a federal jury in Brooklyn. Defreitas, 67, a naturalized US citizen and former cargo handler at the airport, was found guilty of all six charges against him. Kadir, 58, a citizen of Guyana who once served as a parliament member there, was found guilty on five of the six charges, acquitted of surveillance of a mass-transportation facility. The men could face life in prison, with sentencing scheduled for December. Prosecutors said the men sought aid from al-Qaeda operative Adnan Shukrijumah, recently indicted in federal court in a supposed plot to launch suicide attacks on the New York City subway system. (WSJ, Aug. 3)

A total of 33 candidates met the Aug. 7 deadline for filing to run for president in Haiti's general elections, scheduled for Nov. 28. The candidacies must still be approved by the Provisional Electoral Council (CEP); the decisions are to be made by Aug. 17. Among the more prominent candidates were: Jude Célestin, running for the Unity party of President René Préval; Jacques Edouard Alexis, a former prime minister in the Préval government who is now the candidate of the Movement for the Progress of Haiti (MPH); Coalition of National Progressive Democrats (RDNP) candidate Myrlande Hyppolite Manigat, a former senator and the wife of ex-president Leslie Manigat (February-June 1988); economist Leslie Voltaire of the Together We Are Strong coalition; and pastor Chavannes Jeune of the Alliance of Christians and Citizens for the Reconstruction of Haiti (ACCRHA).

On July 28 Haitians protested in Port-au-Prince, Hinche, St-Marc and other cities to mark the 95th anniversary of the start of the 1915-1934 US military occupation of their country. Dozens of supporters of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) held a sit-in in front of the US embassy in the northeastern Port-au-Prince suburb of Tabarre to demand Aristide's return from South Africa, the firing of election officials and the withdrawal of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), a 9,000-member military and police occupation force. Embassy officials met with a delegation of FL leaders, including Maryse Narcisse, who demanded that the US not finance the scheduled Nov. 28 general elections as long as the FL continued to be excluded from the ballot.

Thousands of people marched in front of the Puerto Rican police headquarters on Franklin D. Roosevelt Avenue in San Juan's Hato Rey neighborhood on July 18 to demand the removal of police chief José Figueroa Sancha and his second-in-command, José Rosa Carrasquillo, and the disbanding of the Tactical Operations Unit. The marchers started at three different points in the city, including a campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR); students from the UPR's 11 campuses defeated a proposed austerity plan with a two-month strike this spring. Some organizers said more than 5,000 people participated in the march, while police sources put the number at 3,000.

On July 12, exactly six months after an earthquake devastated much of southern Haiti, a storm caused serious damage in a camp authorities had set up for quake survivors in Corail-Cesselesse, a deserted area about 24 km north of Port-au-Prince. Some 1,700 of the camp's 7,000 residents were left without shelter when the storm ripped up or otherwise damaged 344 ShelterBox tents, which are supposedly designed for resistance to storms. About six people were injured by debris, and a woman and her baby were hit by lightning; the woman was badly burned, and local radio reported that the baby died.

On June 30 Haitian president René Préval rejected changes US senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), the leading minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposed for presidential and legislative elections that are now scheduled for Nov. 28. In a report earlier in the month, Lugar called for international "partners" to help restructure the eight-member Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) and for candidates from the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) to be allowed to run. The legislative elections were scheduled for Feb. 28 but had to be postponed because of a massive earthquake on Jan. 12. The elections are expected to cost $29.6 million, with the Haitian government providing $7 million and international donors supplying the rest.

Dozens of demonstrators were injured at Puerto Rico's Capitol building June 30 when riot police used batons and tear gas to keep hundreds of students and their supporters from entering a session of the Legislature that was to vote on unpopular budget cuts and a measure to end student assemblies. Senate president Thomas Rivera Schatz had apparently closed the public galleries before the vote, and the next day a police agent reportedly testified that the police violence had been planned in advance.