Three people, including two children, were killed when a bomb planted in a donkey cart exploded at a Sufi shrine in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on June 21. Worshippers had gathered for a weekly event at the at the Panj Peer shrine, which houses the graves of several Sufi saints, as well as popular Pashto poet Rahman Baba. The donkey, whose front legs were tied with a rope, was blown to pieces. Almost simultaneously, another bomb exploded at a mosque in Quetta, Baluchistan, killing two worshippers and wounding 13 others. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, but militants such as the Taliban vehemently oppose Sufism, a form of "folk Islam" that they consider heretical. (Pakistan Express Tribune, June 22; AFP, June 21)

A judge in Nicaragua on June 20 ruled that the man who allegedly plotted the fatal attack on revered Argentine folk-singer Facundo Cabral last year will be charged in the Central American country for drug trafficking and money laundering. Costa Rican national Alejandro Jimenez Gonzalez AKA "Palidejo" is currently being tried in Guatemala, where Cabral was killed last year. The criminal court in Managua said it would prosecute another 20 people accused of running a trafficking network that stretched from Costa Rica to Mexico. Nicaraguan police arrested 11 of Palidejo’s associates last month—including Julio César Osuna, a former judge who once served on Nicaragua's electoral council. Osuna's brother was also among the detained.

A mutiny by rank-and-file National Police demanding higher wages spread across Bolivia on June 22, with an estimated 4,000 officers occupying barracks. The mutiny began the previous night, when some 30 officers and their wives seized control of the barracks of the elite anti-riot force (UTOP), just a block from the presidential palace in La Paz. Striking officers also sacked and set fire to furniture and documents at a police office in downtown La Paz that processes disciplinary complaints. Officers quickly joined the protest in major cities including Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Oruro, demanding direct talks with President Evo Morales. The president returned early from the UN climate summit in Brazil to deal with the crisis, and is currently in the palace, protected by rifle-weilding military police.

A meeting of 60 Iranian trade unionists was raided by security forces June 17 in the northern city of Karaj, and all were arrested. Most were members of the Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' Organizations, including longtime labor activist Mahmoud Salehi. Most were released the following day, including Salehi, but nine remain in the custody and have been transferred to the special Intelligence Office in the city of Rasht. Advocates note that the meeting was peaceful, and authorities showed to warrants for the arrests.

At the People's Summit being held on the sidelines of the Rio +20 UN environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, leaders of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian Oriente (CIDOB) denounced President Evo Morales for violating the rights of indigenous peoples in Bolivia's eastern lowlands. Announced CIDOB vice president Nelly Romero: "We have unmasked the double standard that [Morales] has in his discourse on the international level, making believe that he is a defender of indigenous peoples, of the rights of the indigenous peoples of Mother Earth, of the natural resources and the forest." Celso Padilla, president of the Continental Council of the Guaraní People, noted the death of two indigenous leaders in a traffic accident on the cross-country march now underway to oppose construction of a highway through the TIPNIS indigenous reserve. "This wouldn't have happened if the president had not been infatuated with building the highway through the TIPNIS; the only one responsible is him." (Erbol, June 20)

In a statement issued June 19 at its Stuttgart headquarters, US Africa Command chief Gen. Carter F. Ham said last year's Operation Odyssey Dawn, the NATO mission in Libya, "imparted important lessons [for] the Defense Department's newest combatant command" and said it "welcomes a new African partner to the fold while still dealing with some of the residual challenges left by the former regime." Gen. Ham said that AfriCom "is forming a new military-to-military relationship with the Libyans and is working to strengthen its long-term military-to-military relationship with the Tunisians." Speaking about the Pentagon's future role on the African continent, Ham stated: "It is probably not going to be very often where Africa Command goes to the more kinetic, the more offensive operations in Africa. But nonetheless, we have to be ready to do that if the president requires that of us." (US Africa Command, June 19 via AllAfrica)

Thousands of Egyptians filled Cairo's Tahrir Square June 19 to protest the ruling military council's assumption of new powers, amid contesting claims by both presidential candidates of victory in the weekend's election. "General Ahmed Shafik is the next president of Egypt,'' said a spokesman for his campaign, asserting that the candidate won some 500,000 votes more than Muslim Brotherhood challenger Mohammed Mursi. Protesters chanted "Down with military rule!" The rally was jointly called by the Muslim Brotherhood and the April 6 Youth Movement to oppose a decree by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) dissolving the Islamist-led parliament, following a Supreme Constitutional Court ruling last week decried as a "military coup." (AlJazeera, June 19; Ahram Online, June 15; Aswat Masriya via AllAfrica, June 14)

Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexico's leading presidential candidate, this week appointed Gen. Oscar Naranjo, former chief of Colombia's National Police, to work as an "external advisor" for public security if he wins the July 1 election. Peña Nieto of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), called Colombia a "successful example" for Mexico in the fight against drug cartels. Naranjo is credited with helping take down Medellín Cartel kingpin Pablo Escobar in 1993, and more recent gains against the FARC guerillas. In a press conference with Peña Nieto, Naranjo employed the rhetoric of Colombia's so-called "democratic security" model: "Security, understood as a democratic value, is expressed in policies that are totally inclusive, that protect everyone." An official biography of Naranjo distributed to reporters lists him as an "honorary member" of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).