Mexican and US authorities are investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy who was shot late June 7 near the Juárez-El Paso crossing, apparently by a US Border Patrol agent. Eyewitnesses said Sergio Hernández was playing with friends in a dry area of the river that forms the border. Crossing momentarily into the US with his friends, he was chased by a patrol agent. He ran back onto Mexican soil, hid behind a steel wall—and was shot in the head when looked out.

As many as 2,000 Mexican federal police and Sonora state police, supported by helicopters, invaded the Cananea copper mine on the night of June 6, firing tear gas and attacking and beating workers who were defending the mine. With the police having cleared the mine, managers from Grupo Mexico, the mine owner, took control of the facilities. The company reported that it had 2,000 "contractors" ready to go to work as soon as it was safe to do so.

After 16 years, Peru's single-chamber Congress finally passed into law on May 19 the rights enshrined in International Labor Organization Convention 169, which commits nations to protecting indigenous and tribal peoples. In 1994 Peru ratified ILO Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which establishes in article 6 the right of native peoples to be consulted on matters affecting their territories. In the intervening years, some 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been opened to oil companies, and mining projects on indigenous lands have proliferated in the Andean sierras.

Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil company, has accused BASF Corp., Murphy Energy Corp. and three other US companies of knowingly buying stolen natural gas condensate from Mexican bandits, according to a lawsuit filed in Houston federal court. Pemex Exploracion y Produccion, the company's production unit, accused the companies of facilitating a black market in natural gas condensate stolen from Pemex's Burgos Field on Mexico's Gulf Coast. As much as $300 million in liquids have been smuggled across the border in hijacked tanker trucks since 2006, Pemex asserts.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, June 7:

CCR Endorses New Report Showing Evidence of Bush Administration
Human Experimentation on Men in CIA Secret Detention
Violations of Nuremburg Code and Role of Health Professionals
In Secret Torture Program Require Criminal Investigation
Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement in response to a new report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program. Download the report at http://phrtorturepapers.org.

From Amnesty International, June 7:

Images of missile and cluster munitions point to US role in fatal attack in Yemen
Amnesty International has released images of a US-manufactured cruise missile that carried cluster munitions, apparently taken following an attack on an alleged al-Qa'ida training camp in Yemen that killed 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children. The 17 December 2009 attack on the community of al-Ma'jalah in the Abyan area in the south of Yemen killed 55 people including 14 alleged members of al-Qa'ida.

The Israeli Navy opened fire on an armed squad of five Palestinians wearing diving suits and supposedly on their way to attack Israeli targets, the IDF said June 7. An army source told the daily Haaretz that at about 4:30 AM, naval commandos identified and fired on a boat carrying five armed Palestinians heading north from waters off the Nuseirath refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip. Sources in Gaza reported that four Palestinians were killed. Hamas later confirmed the deaths and said a fifth Palestinian was missing—although conflicting reports from Gaza claimed at least two of the five-member squad survived. Other Palestinian sources told Haaretz that the militants were members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. (Haaretz, June 7)

From a June 4 op-ed in the International Herald Tribune by Anene Ejikeme, "The Oil Spills We Don't Hear About":

Experts estimate that some 13 million barrels of oil have been spilt in the Niger Delta since oil exploration began in 1958. This is the equivalent of one Exxon Valdez every year for 50 years.