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)

Three attacks were made on Royal Dutch Shell oil facilities in a remote area of Nigeria's Niger Delta June 21. A company spokesman refused to speculate on who was behind the attacks, but the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said it had attacked an offshore facility earlier that day and that "the structure is...engulfed in fire." MEND claimed June 19 that it destroyed a pipeline owned by the Italian gas company Agip, and earlier in the week claimed to have destroyed Shell's main trunk line in Bayelsa state as well as a Chevron oil installation in the Delta region. Shell confirmed an attack on that pipeline. Chevron, which halted its onshore operations in the region last month, said it was investigating. Last month, MEND declared an "all-out war" on the government after what it said was a deadly bombing raid on civilians. (CNN, June 21)

The global financial crisis has pushed the ranks of the hungry to a record 1 billion people, a milestone that poses a threat to peace and security, UN officials said June 19 in Rome. Due to war, drought, high food prices and poverty, hunger now affects one in six people, according to an estimate by the Food and Agriculture Organization. There are 100 million more hungry people now than last year, the agency said. It defines hunger as the consumption of fewer than 1,800 calories a day. (AP, June 19)

More evidence both of electoral fraud and an internecine struggle among Iran's ruling clerics emerged this weekend, as security forces clashed with protesters in the streets of Tehran. On June 21, the government said it had arrested the daughter and other relatives of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani. They were apparently later released, but their arrests appeared to be a clear warning from the hard-line establishment to a cleric who may be aligning himself with the opposition. AP reports that the night of the 21st, Tehran's streets fell mostly quiet for the first time since the disputed June 12 election—but defiant cries of "God is great!" echoed again from rooftops after dark.