Ecuador's President Rafael Correa declared a state of emergency Sept. 30 as the National Police launched a rebellion over austerity measures that cut their benefits, erecting roadblocks with burning tires on the highways, occupying their barracks in all the major cities, and seizing the landing strips at the Quito airport. When Correa approached a police barracks to attempt to negotiate, officers shoved him and fired tear gas at him. Video footage showed men, including uniformed officers, manhandling the president and attempting to yank a gas-mask from his face. Correa, who recently underwent knee surgery, was still walking with a crutch. "This is a coup attempt," Correa said in a TV phone interview from a hospital, where he was taken for the effects of gas inhalation. "They're trying to get into my room, maybe to attack me. I don't know. But, forget it. I won't relent. If something happens to me, remember my infinite love for my country, and to my family I say that I will love them anywhere I end up." Correa later appeared at an upper floor window, shouting to a crowd of supporters who had gathered below, "I'm not taking one step back!" Ripping his necktie loose to reveal his chest, he added, "Gentlemen, if you want to kill the president, here he is—kill him if you have the guts!"

Indigenous organizations from the tri-border area where Peru's Madre de Dios region, Bolivia's Pando department and Brazil's Acre state come together met in Puerto Maldonado, Peru, Sept. 28, and issued a statement declaring a "state of emergency" throughout the Amazon rainforest due to the "intense promotion, approval and execution of mega-projects by the governments of the three countries." The Fourth Tri-national Encuentro of Indigenous Peoples especially demanded cancellation of the Inambari hydro-electric plant in Madre de Dios and the Cachuela Esperanza hydro-dam in Pando. The meeting was called by the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA). (La Republica, Lima, Servindi, Indigenous Peoples Issues & Resources, Sept. 29)

In the village of Ascensión, in northern Mexico's Chihuahua state, some 300 residents beat to death two 17-year-old boys who reportedly had kidnapped a 17-year-old girl on Sept. 21. Federal police were sent to the area to respond to the incident and to calm the angry mob. The incident began when the girl was abducted from a local restaurant. The girl's father alerted the authorities. In a car chase with police and army troops, the vehicle in which the kidnappers and the girl were in rolled over. The girl was released ans the two abductors arrested. But two others apparently involved in the kidnapping were seized and beaten by residents when their vehicle fell into a canal. The mob also blocked paramedics and emergency personnel from the scene. Two other suspects in the kidnapping remain at large. (El Paso Times, Sept. 22)

NATO forces in Afghanistan launched two airstrikes against Taliban fighters on the Pakistani side of the border, killing more than 30 people on Sept. 24 and 25, military spokesmen confirmed. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) initially denied that its forces had launched the airstrikes, although they were confirmed by Afghan police officials. On Sept. 27, however, a statement from ISAF confirmed the attacks. Initially, a base close to the border in Khost province, known as Combat Outpost Narizah, came under fire from insurgents. When what ISAF described as an "air weapons team" responded, they came under fire from the insurgents across the border in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, and returned fire. When two ISAF helicopters returned to the area the next day, they were again fired on from the Pakistani side of the border, and again returned fire.

Several thousand Israeli settlers and supporters celebrated to mark the end Sept. 26 to a 10-month moratorium on new construction in their West Bank enclaves. "The building freeze is over," Danny Danon, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, declared as balloons were released into the air at the West Bank settlement of Revava. "Today we mark the resumption of building in Judea and Samaria!" Netanyahu had urged Israeli settlers to show restraint as the limited building freeze expired at midnight. But at Revava, outside Nablus, residents expressed their defiance at a groundbreaking ceremony where a mixer symbolically poured cement into a hole in the ground amid cheers and the blasting of car horns. The celebration was attended by thousands bused in for the occasion. (Reuters, Sept. 26)

A protest was held in Albuquerque, NM, on Sept. 18, demanding police intensify their search for a culprit in a mass grave discovered at West Mesa on the outskirts of the city last year. The protest, called by the group Justice of the West Mesa Women, was held outside the city police headquarters, with marchers carrying crosses draped in women's clothing. In February 2009, authorities in West Mesa found the bodies of 11 women, including one who had been pregnant, in a mass grave. At least 10 other women in the West Mesa area have been reported missing, and authorities fear that there are more missing persons that may have gone unreported. Most of the women went missing between 2001 and 2005. The case has drawn parallels to the Ciudad Juárez femicide. (The Scribe, University of Colorado, Sept. 20; KOB-TV, Albuquerque, Sept. 18)

On Sept. 21, Ciudad Juárez municipal police destroyed a house that had been occupied for 40 years by Refugio Tagle Valdez and his family at Lomas de Poleo, a community on the outskirts of the border city. Tagle, who built the house four decades ago, said that neither he nor his attorney had been informed that the demolition was imminent. The lands at Lomas de Poleo are claimed by local businessman Pedro Zaragoza. Local residents assert that the lands were found to be national property by a 1975 ruling of the Agrarian Reform Secretariat. (La Jornada, Sept. 23)

The National Front of Popular Resistance and other organizations protested the participation of the Honduran de facto president, Porfirio Lobo, in the sessions of the UN General Assembly. In an open letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, the signatories state that Lobo's presence in the forum violates the spirit of the UN resolution of June 30, 2009, which condemned the coup in Honduras. The letter points out that the resolution remains in force, and charges that political persecution and human rights abuses continue in the Central American country. The letter also states that Lobo's government has given no guarantee for a safe return of ousted president Manuel Zelaya to Honduras. "Consequently, we reject the presence of Mr. Lobo in this forum, set up to ensure democratic freedoms, fundamental freedoms and human rights," reads the text. The letter was also signed by the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees, the Center for Women's Rights and FIAN-Honduras. (Inside Costa Rica, Sept. 24)