Coca cultivation in Colombia dropped by 18% in 2008, following a 27% rise in 2007, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says in a new report issued June 19. Cocaine production in Colombia, the world's largest producer of the drug, also fell 28% from a year earlier. These declines were partly offset by increases in coca cultivation in Bolivia, up 6%, and in Peru, up 4.5%, the report said. UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa warned: "Peru must guard against a return to the days when terrorists and insurgents profited from drugs and crime." (NYT, BBC News, June 19)

Salvatore Miceli, dubbed the "Mafia's foreign minister," will be deported to Italy after his capture in Caracas June 21 in a joint operation by Venezuelan and Italian police. Italian authorities charge Miceli worked as a middleman between Italy's Cosa Nostra and 'Ndrangheta networks and the Colombian cocaine cartels.

While the fate of dozens of recently detained students remains in limbo, students at several universities across Iran continue daily sit-ins and protests against what they are calling the "electoral coup" of June 12. Student sources say no information is available on the fate of 50 students who have been "kidnapped" from Tehran University. Meanwhile, Nasser Aminnejad, an engineering PhD candidate who was killed during the attack of plain-clothed forces on the Tehran University dormitories was buried in the city of Yasooj. A group of 57 law professors and attorneys issued a statement calling for punishment of "aggressors to the holy vicinity of university campuses and dormitories in cities across the nation, especially the Tehran University dormitories, and forces responsible for the beating of students." (Rooz Online, June 23)

At least 45 people were killed in a missile strike by a US drone aircraft in Pakistan's South Waziristan region, officials there said June 23. Those killed had been attending a funeral for others killed in a US drone strike earlier in the day. The region is a stronghold of Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud.

Indigenous Mam campesinos set fire to a pickup truck and an exploration drill rig on June 12 at the Marlin gold mine in San Miguel Ixtahuacán municipality in the western Guatemalan department of San Marcos, according to media reports. The protesters said the mine—operated by Montana Exploradora de Guatemala, SA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Canadian mining company Goldcorp Inc.—had illegally placed its equipment on their land, endangering their water supply, and that they had been asking for two weeks for the company to move the equipment.

On June 19 Judge Sarah Enríquez Marín of the Administrative Litigation Court of the National District (Santo Domingo) ordered the Consorcio Minero Dominicano mining company to suspend construction of a cement factory it was building near the town of Gonzalo, in Sabana Grande de Boyá municipality in the northeastern Dominican province of Monte Plata. She issued the order in relation to a complaint the United Communities Movement of Peasant Workers (MCCU) and the environmental group Espeleogrupo had filed on May 20 against the Environment Ministry charging that the ministry had granted Consorcio Minero Dominicano the license for the plant illegally.

On June 12 Haitian president René Préval finally responded to a bill Parliament has passed to raise the minimum wage from 70 gourdes ($1.74) a day to 200 gourdes ($4.97). The pay hike, the first since 2003, cleared the Senate on May 5. In an official letter to the presidents of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Préval repeated claims of Haitian business associations that the wage increase would jeopardize the subcontracting sector, the free trade zone (FTZ) factories that assemble goods largely for export. He proposed an increase to 125 gourdes for that sector, and called on Parliament to be open to negotiations on the measure. (Haiti Press Network, June 17; Radio Métropole, Haiti, June 18)

Police again broke up protests in Tehran June 22, as the Revolutionary Guards warned they would crush "rioters" opposing the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "In the current sensitive situation...the Guards will firmly confront in a revolutionary way rioters and those who violate the law," said a statement on the Guards' website. Thestatement comes a day after pposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi called for continued protests. Ali Shahrokhi, head of parliament's judiciary committee, said Mousavi should be prosecuted for "illegal protests and issuing provocative statements." (Reuters, June 22)