Central America
Gay activist assassinated in Honduras
Walter Trochez, a well-known LGBT leader in Honduras and activist in the resistance against the coup d’etat, was gunned down by drive-by killers in central Tegucigalpa.
Author: CounterVortex
Central America
Honduras: anti-sweatshop campaigns advance
Students at North American campuses are demanding their universities drop licensing agreements with Nike unless 1,800 workers for Honduran contractors get back pay and severance packages.
The Andes
Colombia: attorney and labor leader threatened
Colombian human rights attorney Jorge Eliécer Molano-Rodríguez and labor leader Luis Javier Correa Suárez have both received threats in recent weeks. Solidarity groups call for urgent action.
Southern Cone
Chile: will Frei murder charges affect runoff?
Chile’s presidential race heads for a run-off just as murder charges are brought in the death of candidate Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle’s father—on the likely orders of late dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The Caribbean
Haiti: US indicts five in Téléco bribe case
The US has charged two former Haitian officials and three Florida telecom executives with foreign bribery, wire fraud and money laundering related to corruption at Haiti Téléco.
The Andes
Venezuelan offer to save Bronx jobs rebuffed
CITGO, subsidiary of Venezuela’s state oil monopoly, reportedly attempted to buy a Bronx cookie plant to save the jobs of 136 unionized workers—but the company’s owners ignored the offer.
Mexico
NAFTA failed Mexico: Carnegie think tank
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace finds that Mexico’s annual per capital growth rate under NAFTA has been slow—1.6% in 1992-2007, compared to 3.5% in 1960-1979.
Watching the Shadows
Federal judge denies Yemeni Gitmo detainee’s habeas petition
A judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia denied Yemeni Guantánamo Bay detainee Musa’ab Al-Madhwani’s petition for habeas corpus.
Greater Middle East
Human Rights Watch charges repression in south Yemen
In a new report, Human Rights Watch calls on Yemeni authorities to stop using lethal force against protesters and to end attacks on the media in southern Yemen.
Africa
Human Rights Watch charges massacres in eastern Congo
A new Human Rights Watch report documents in detail the deliberate killing of more than 1,400 civilians during Congolese army operations against a Rwandan Hutu militia this year.
Greater Middle East
US military intervention in Yemen: reports
Shi’ite Houthi rebels charge that US fighter jets bombed their positions in north Yemen, as the UK’s Daily Telegraph reports that Washington has ordered Special Forces teams to the country.
Watching the Shadows
Supreme Court declines to hear torture suit by former UK Gitmo detainees
The US Supreme Court declined to hear a lawsuit by four UK citizens and former Guantánamo Bay detainees against former US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other US officials.