Seventeen people were arrested on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao for involvement in a drug-trafficking ring with connections to Hezbollah, the police there said April 29. The suspects, detained the previous day, included four people from Lebanon and others from Curaçao, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, the police chief, Carlos Casseres, said. Some of the proceeds, funneled through the Middle East, went toward supporting groups linked to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Casseres said. The ring is also accused of forwarding requests from Lebanon for arms to be shipped from South America. (AP, April 30)

Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council (CEP) suspended voting for senators on April 19 in the Central Plateau department after violence disrupted the process there in at least three cities. A candidate and his supporters occupied a polling place in Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau near the Dominican border. Armed men in five vehicles disrupted voting at two polling place in downtown Mirebalais, and an election worker received a bullet wound early in the day. Local electoral authorities suspended voting in Saut d'eau after people threw rocks at a voting center and charged into others.

Six striking doctors were lightly injured on April 15 when Dominican police suppressed a peaceful march by doctors and nurses near the Darío Contreras hospital in eastern Santo Domingo. Police agents hurled tear-gas grenades at the protesters and attacked them with nightsticks. Dominican Medical Guild (CMD) president Waldo Ariel Suero said the agents also used pistols. The injuries weren't serious, he added, but "the consequences could have been greater." The commander of the police operation, Ventura Hilario, said he tried to stop the march because the medical workers didn't have a permit and because they were blocking traffic.

Bolivia's President Evo Morales told a press conference at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago that he had asked US President Barack Obama to publicly repudiate an assassination plot against him. Although Morales stopped short of accusing the US of being behind the plot, he said Obama's speech promising a new policy for the Americas rings hollow without a denunciation: "Obama said three things: There are neither senior or junior partners. He said relations should be of mutual respect, and he spoke of change. In Bolivia...one doesn't feel any change. The policy of conspiracy continues."

On the night of April 8 US federal prosecutors filed an 11-count indictment in El Paso, Texas, charging that Cuban-born former US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "asset" Luis Posada Carriles perjured himself and obstructed justice in 2005 when he told immigration authorities he was not involved in the bombing of two Havana hotels in 1997; Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo was killed in one of the attacks, at the Copacabana Hotel. Posada was quoted in a 1998 New York Times article as saying that he was in fact involved, and there is speculation that federal agents have found additional information linking him to the attacks. A New Jersey grand jury has also been investigating the bombings, although no charges have been filed in that case. Posada is scheduled to go on trial before US district judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso on Aug. 10.

At least 5,000 workers have been laid off recently in free trade zone (FTZ) factories in the Dominican Republic's Santiago province, according to the United Unions Federation, which is made up of 38 unions in the northern Dominican Republic. FTZs are industrial parks for tax-exempt assembly plants producing for export. The job cuts included layoffs of 1,000 workers at FM Industries, which makes pants for export to the US, on April 7; the dismissal of 2,000 workers by a plant that made cigars for export to the US and Europe; and the loss of 600 jobs when a footwear company closed after 50 years in business. (Latin American Herald Tribune, April 9 from EFE)

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.

Former US president Bill Clinton and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon arrived in Haiti on March 9 along with a large group of private investors for a 24-hour visit they said was aimed at increasing international aid for the country. Supporters of the Lavalas Family (FL) party of former president Jean Bertrand Aristide (1991-1996 and 2001-2004) held demonstrations to call for Clinton's help in arranging for Aristide, who has lived in South Africa since being removed from office in February 2004, to return to Haiti.