At least four are dead and several more injured following clashes between police and residents at Challhuahuacho in Peru's Apurímac region, amid protests over Las Bambas copper mine project, now nearing completion. Several hundred residents attacked the installation, and police responded with tear-gas. Authorities have mobilized army troops to the area and imposed a 30-day state of emergency. Residents in the local province of Cotabambas and neighboring Grau launched an ongoing civil strike last week to demand that the owner of project, Hong Kong-based MinMetals Resources (MMG Ltd), make changes to its environmental management plan. Protesters oppose the company's plan to process concentrates of copper and molybdenum in the town, threatening local waters. They also object to plans for processed ore to be shipped to the Pacific coast by train and truck rather than pipeline, posing greater risk of spill. The plan was recently revised by the company to allow these practices, sparking the protests. The mine is scheduled to begin production in 2016 and is exepected to produce 400,000 metric tons of copper the following year. (Channel News Asia, NYT, BNAmerica, Sept. 29; AP, Sept. 28; Diario Correo, Sept. 27)

The fall of Afghanistan's northern city of Kunduz to the Taliban is making headlines—the first major city to be taken by the insurgents since the US invasion of 2001, and well outside their traditional stronghold in the country's south. A pitched battle to retake the city is now raging, and the US has launched air-strikes, causing God knows what carnage among the civilian inhabitants. But while the world media have been paying little attention, this didn't come out of nowhere. Kunduz city had been under siege for a month, and the Taliban have taken control of nearly all of Kunduz province, as well as much of the neighboring province of Takhar. This resurgence comes as the Taliban have broken off talks with the government under the new more hardline leadership of Mullah Akhtar Mansour. On the same day as the fall of Kunduiz, a suicide blast amid spectators at a volleyball match in Paktika province left nine dead and many more wounded. And hundreds of fighters claiming loyalty to ISIS attacked military checkpoints in Nangarhar province, in a coordinated assault that has left at least two soliders dead (probably many more).

The Obama administration on Sept. 25 notified Congress of its plan to release Guantánamo Bay inmate Shaker Aamer to the United Kingdom next month. Aamer, who was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, is the final British resident held in the United States' military prison. Although he denies association, Aamer allegedly held close ties to Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, and fought in the battle of Tora Bora. Now the Saudi national, who married a British citizen in 1990, will be sent back to the UK in mid-October, following a long run of lobbying by British politicians and celebrities to have Aamer released.

Crimean Tartars earlier this month launched an ongoing blockade of food deliveries to Crimea from Ukraine in protest of Russia's annexation of the peninsula. Refat Chubarov, a Crimean Tatar leader who was banned from the peninsula by Russia after its March 2014 take-over, told the New York Times no trucks would be allowed through border crossings after barricades went up on Sept. 20. Sergei Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed prime minister of Crimea, said the blockade would have little effect, as only about 5% of the goods consumed in the region come through Ukraine. "The trade blockade of Crimea begun by Ukrainian activists with the support of a number of Kiev politicians will not affect food supplies in the region," he told Russia's state-run Rossiya 24 satellite TV. "Crimea will not notice this."

A grimly telling story in the news this week. The Aleppo-based International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), with an extensive collection of indigenous seed stock from Syria and the Fertile Crescent, took refuge in Beiirut in 2012. ICARDA director Dr. Mahmoud Solh told Radio Australia that rebel forces allowed his team to depart with some 140,000 seed packets from freezer storage as Aleppo descended into war. "The center was occupied unfortunately by armed forces... but some of them are farmers and they had received seeds from us," he said. "They understood the value of the center and they know we are apolitical and have nothing to do with the government." But not all of ICARDA's seed samples made it out, and now Dr. Solh is requesting a withdrawl from a remote Arctic "doomsday" seed bank with samples from around the world to be safeguarded in the event of global catastrophe. Reuters reports that ICARDA wants some 130 boxes out of 325 it had deposited with the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, containing a total of 116,000 samples.

We've noted that the proximity of Western and Russian military forces in Syria holds the potential for escalation to World War 5, even if both sides are ostensibly part of the global convergence against ISIS. Now comes a further sign that the centripetal tendency will prevail—the common interest in figting jihadism propeling the situation back into World War 4. At the UN General Assembly session in New York, British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad can be part of a transitional government, although adding that Assad has "butchered his own people" and that "Assad cannot be part of Syria's future in the long run." This comes across as weak lip service in light of his capitulation. (Al Arabiya News, The Guardian, The Telegraph)

Ecuador's Communications Secretariat (Secom) on Sept. 25 officially halted proceedings to shut down the free-speech advocacy organization Fundamedios. Secretary Fernando Alvarado said he was complying with a recommendation from Ecudaor's official rights ombudsman, the Defensoría del Pueblo, whose chief Ramiro Rivadeneira had four days earlier called on the government to drop the proceedings. But the move follows revelations that Ecuador's National Intelliegnce Secretariat (SENAIN) spent $47 million in public funds to contract the firm Emerging MC to purge YouTube and other social media of material critical of President Rafael Correa. (AP, The Verge, Sept. 25; BuzzFeed, ElSalvador.com, Sept. 24;  EFE, Sept. 21)

Residents in of Simón Bolívar, in Peru's Pasco region, clashed with National Police in a highway confrontation Sept. 23, as they were returning from a cross-country march to La Oroya ​metal-smelting complex in neighboring Junín region. One protester was injured with a blow to the head in the fracas, which apparently began when an officer made a death threat to the passing demonstrators. The marchers intend to continue to Lima, and an officer reportedly told them that if they attempted to advance towards the capital they would "die like dogs." The protesters are demanding health and environmental remediation measures to address contamination of the area's waters with heavy metals from the Oroya complex. (RPP)