Following the issuance of Ministerial Resolution 264 by Peru's Ministy of Energy and Mines (MINEM) on June 14, suspending construction of the Inambari hydro-electric dam in the rainforest region of Madre de Dios, protesters called off their paro, or civil strike, in Macusani, capital of Carabaya province in the neighboring region of Puno. Macusani had been paralyzed since June 8 by protests demanding cancellation of the project, with traffic blocked on the newly paved Interoceanic Highway connecting the region to Brazil.

Walter Aduviri, leader of the Aymara protest movement in Peru's southern Andean region of Puno, is currently under police siege in the studios of Lima's Panamericana TV station. Following an interview the morning of June 15 on the program "Buenos Días Peru," Aduviri was approached by an officer of the Judicial Police, who requested that he follow him. Aduviri—who has been under arrest orders since May 9—declined, and instead returned to the Panamericana studios. Both a large contingent of police and some 60 of Aduviri's supporters gathered outside, and the stand-off continues at this hour. "I am not detained, but under refuge," Aduviri told his supporters in a subsequent interview on Panamericana's Chennel 5. "If I am taken and the population finds out, there will be extreme confrontations, and this we do not want." (RPP, AFP, Living in Peru, June 15)

Officials in Peru this week denied claims by the UK-based Survival International that the government plans to abolish the Murunahua Territorial Reserve, created in 1997 to protect almost 1.2 million acres (482,000 hectares) of Amazon rainforest thought to be home to "uncontacted" bands of the Murunahua and other native peoples. “We have in no way even considered abolishing the Murunahua Reserve,” said José Carlos Vilcapoma, vice-minister for Interculturality, who administers the country’s indigenous affairs department, INDEPA, characterizing Survival's press release as "absolutely false.”

A court in St. Petersburg, Russia sent two members of a neo-Nazi group behind bars for life on June 15. The group was responsible for at least seven murders, the court found. While gang leader Alexej Vojevodin and follower Arťom Prochorenko were sentenced to life in prison, another 10 members were given sentences of between two and 18 years. The gang's victims include a Senegalese student shot in front of a night club in St. Petersburg, a man of North Korean origin who was stabbed to death on the street, and the anthropologist and ethnographer Nikolaj Girenko, who was shot to death in front of his home in 2004. Girenko was killed apparently because he frequently testified as an expert witness in trials of neo-Nazi perpetrators.

A NATO official acknowledged June 14 that the alliance is considering air-strikes on ancient Roman ruins in north Libya, sparking statements of concern from the United Nations. The anonymous official told CNN the alliance would bomb the ruins of Leptis Magna, between Tripoli and Misrata, if it confirmed that war material is being sequestered there by the Qaddafi regime. Rebel sources claim that Qaddafi-loyalist troops have stashed rocket launchers and other military equipment at the site. (CNN, UPI, Time magazine's Global Spin blog, June 14)

Libyan rebels on June 13 broke through the Qaddafi-loyalist forces besieging Misrata and once again advanced toward Tripoli, some 140 miles to the east. Meanwhile, rebels are reported to have pushed Qaddafi's forces out of several villages in the Jebel Nafusa, the mountain range southwest of Tripoli, where they had been carrying on an offensive for weeks. If the advances from both Misrata and the Nafusa continue, Tripoli could be besieged by the rebels soon.

Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaeda mastermind said to be behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was killed this week at a security checkpoint in Mogadishu, Somalia, by government troops who didn't immediately realize he was the most wanted man in East Africa, officials said June 11. Mohammed, a native of the Comoros Islands, was carrying sophisticated weapons, maps and other "operational materials," as well as tens of thousands of dollars when he was killed, Somali Information Minister Abdulkareem Jama said. US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, then on a visit to Tanzania, called the killing a "significant blow to al-Qaeda, its extremist allies, and its operations in East Africa."

A "peace caravan," which has spent a week travelling through Mexico to protest against drug-related violence and the "war on drugs," crossed the border into the US at Juárez-El Paso on June 11. Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, who led the National Citizen Caravan for Peace with Justice and Dignity, appealed for a similar citizen mobilization in the US. "The US has a grave responsibility in all this, when its citizens remain silent, they are imposing war on us," said Sicilia, whose son was recently killed in drug-related violence. "Americans have to realize that behind every puff of pot, every line of coke there is death, there are shattered families." Sicilia and his convoy of about 20 vehicles began their journey in Cuernavaca, south of Mexico City, and have criss-crossed the country, holding rallies against the escalating violence and militarization along the way. (RFI, Spain, June 12; BBC News, AP, June 11)