China on June 21 instated the death penalty for "particularly serious" cases involving supporters of Taiwanese independence. New judicial guidelines outline severe punishments for activities deemed as fragmenting the country or inciting secession. The new standards, entitled "Opinions on Punishing the Crimes of Splitting the Country & Inciting Splitting the Country by 'Taiwan Independence' Diehards," were jointly issued by the Supreme People's Court, the Supreme People's Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Justice. The document sets forth a legal framework with the goal of combatting "separatist" activities by proponents of Taiwan's independence.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un signed a mutual defense assistance pact on June 19 during Putin's first visit to Pyongyang since 2000. According to a statement from the Russian government, the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership stipulates "mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties thereto." Putin characterized the deal as a "breakthrough document," reflecting the desire to elevate relations to a "new qualitative level."

The Zionist propaganda machine continues to weaponize the accusation of anti-Semitism to delegitimize any effort to resist Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza. This increases rather than decreases the responsibility of activists to distinguish—and oppose—actual anti-Semitism. Yet in recent weeks, sectors of the activist response to the Gaza genocide in the United States have utterly surrendered to the most abject, undisguised, unambiguous anti-Semitism—playing right into the hands of the Zionist calumnies. Bill Weinberg discusses this difficult reality in Episode 231 of the CounterVortex podcast.

The US Department of Agriculture on June 17 suspended inspections of avocados and mangoes in the Mexican state of Michoacán due to security concerns, halting the top source of US imports. The move was taken three days after two agents of the USDA's Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) were accosted during a protest in the town of Paracho, beaten and briefly detained. Michoacán is Mexico's heartland of avocado production, but the trade has been notoriously co-opted by the local warring drug cartels to launder narco-profits, leading to charges of "blood avocados" in the violence-torn state.

Mexico's government added an article to its Amnesty Law in a decree June 14, allowing the head of the Executive Branch to commute sentences and halt criminal proceedings in cases deemed "relevant to the Mexican State," regardless of the severity of the crime. The new Article 9 states the country's president has exclusive authority to grant amnesty directly, without following procedures establlished esewere in the law, in specific cases meeting two conditions. The first is that amnesty is granted to individuals providing verifiable information useful for uncovering the truth in cases relevant to the national nterest; the second is that criminal prosecution has already been initiated against the individual. Amnesties granted under this article extinguish any pending criminal charges.

The National Defense & Security Council of Honduran President Xiomara Castro announced in a national broadcast June 14 a sweeping plan to crack down on crime and safeguard public security. The Crime Solution Plan calls on the Defense and Security secretaries, the Armed Forces, and the Military Police are to immediately plan and execute interventions in municipalities with the highest incidence of major gang-related crimes, such as assassination, drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, and money laundering.

Manila has accused Chinese military vessels of engaging in "dangerous manoeuvres, including ramming and towing" a Philippine ship in an effort to disrupt a "routine" resupply mission to an outpost on Second Thomas Shoal (known to the Philippines as Ayungin Shoal) in the the disputed Spratly Islands (known to the Philippines as the Kalayaan Islands) June 17. By Philippine media accounts, the craft was fired upon with water cannon and boarded by Chinese troops, with several Filipino soldiers injured in the ensuing confrontation. (SCMP, Nikkei Asia, Inquirer, GMA)

Sweden's armed forces on June 15 issued a statement charging that a Russian military aircraft violated the country's airspace the previous day, calling the act "unacceptable."  The Russian SU-24 fighter plane reportedly entered Swedish airspace just east of the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, approximately 150 miles south of Stockholm. A Swedish JAS-39 Gripen jet was sent to intercept the Russian plane after a verbal call to retreat by the Swedish air command was ignored. The Swedish military said that the last violations of the Nordic country's airspace airspace by Russia were in 2022, when two Russian SU-27s and two SU-24s simiarly approached Gotland.