Bowing to pressure from President Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a major speech June 14 that he'd accept a Palestinian state—as long as it was demilitarized and recognized Israel as a Jewish state. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is now on a 10-day tour to gauge the international reaction. (Newsweek, June 16) While Netanyahu's speech has won global headlines as an historic first for the hardline prime minister, we will now see if a reciprocal move by a senior Hamas leader will receive similar media treatment...

Peru's Prime Minister Yehude Simon said June 16 he plans to resign in the coming weeks, as President Alan García's government faces harsh criticism over its handling of protests by indigenous groups in the Amazon region. Simon, a former left-wing activist, joined the cabinet last October in an effort by García to improve relations with Peru's poor. A day earlier, Simon announced that he had reached a deal with the protesters in which he would ask Congress to repeal the controversial decrees that would speed development in the Amazon. (NYT, June 16)

A legal challenge in the US Supreme Court to the construction of the US-Mexico border wall was declared dead June 16. The justices declined to hear an appeal by the County of El Paso, Texas, to an earlier decision by a US federal court judge that allowed the Bush administration to proceed with construction of the controversial wall.

Mexican army troops captured 25 gunmen at a ranch in Chihuahua state June 13, who witnesses say had disguised themselves as soldiers. The troops also seized 29 automatic rifles during the raid at the pueblo of Nicolás Bravo, Madera municipality, in the Sierra Tarahumara. The National Defense Secretary (SEDENA) has mobilized 5,000 more troops to the Sierra's dope-growing "Triángulo Dorado" to hunt down opium and marijuana crops.

The governments of many developed countries will in effect boycott a conference the United Nations is holding in New York June 24-26 to discuss the impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries. The developed countries object to efforts by the General Assembly president—Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, who was foreign minister for Nicaragua's leftist government in the 1980s—to have the conference discuss reforming such bodies as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). "You can't have a few calling the shots and others suffering the consequences of their decisions," D'Escoto said to the British daily Financial Times about the major powers. "If they were more frank, they should say might is right." His one-year term ends in September. (FT, June 7)

On June 15 the US Supreme Court declined without comment to review the case of the "Cuban Five." German author Günter Grass, Guatemalan activist Rigoberta Menchú and eight other Nobel Prize winners had joined supporters filing amicus curiae ("friend of the court") briefs with the Supreme Court seeking to overturn the 2001 convictions of the five Cuban men charged with spying against the US. Eleven other groups, including legislators from the European Parliament, also filed briefs, and a panel of the United Nations Human Rights Commission condemned the original trial for the men; this was the first time the panel ever condemned a US judicial proceeding. (Reuters, June 15; Miami Herald, June 9)

On June 3 the Brazilian Senate approved a bill regulating government transfers of land in the Amazon region. The bill—Conversion Bill 09 (PLV 09/2009, originally MP 458/09)—was passed by the Chamber of Deputies in May and awaits the signature of President Luis Inácio "Lula" da Silva. The Catholic Church's Pastoral Commission on Land (CPT), Greenpeace, WWF-Brasil (the Brazilian affiliate of the World Wildlife Fund) and other groups say some articles in the measure will enable companies and individuals to keep lands they seized illegally. The law "especially benefits people who should be on trial for usurping areas covered by the agrarian reform," according to Greenpeace. The groups are urging people to call on Lula (phone +61-3411.1200, +61-3411.1201 or email at https://sistema.planalto.gov.br/falepr2/index.php) to veto the articles. (Adital, June 12)

On June 8 Peru's Transportation and Communication Ministry (MTC) cancelled the license of Radio La Voz de Bagua, a family-owned radio station with a signal of 100 watts in Utcubamba province in the Amazonas region in the north of the country. The MTC cited technical issues with the station's equipment, but La Voz news director Carlos Flores Burgos dismissed this as "a lie." The station is based in the area where dozens of people died on June 5 in a confrontation between police and indigenous protesters, and Flores said the station had made it possible for members of the public to report alleged abuses by security forces. After the June 5 killings, Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas accused the station of agitating the situation and called for sanctions against it, while Congress members Aurelio Pastor, Jorge Del Castillo and Mauricio Mulde, all from the Peruvian Aprista Party (PAP) of President Alan García, accused La Voz and Flores of supporting and inciting violence.