Malian security forces clashed with a group of suspected al-Qaeda militants June 17 in the northern Tessalit region, killing several people, a senior military source told Reuters. The armed forces sent out patrols to try to track down the suspected militants around Mali's northern border region with Algeria after the assassination this month of the security chief of the Timbuktu region.

Thousands of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran June 16 in rival demonstrations over the country's disputed presidential election, pushing the crisis into its fourth day despite a government offer to recount a limited number of ballots. With a harsh media crackdown in place, word has been slow to get out of protests outside Tehran—but at least two are reported dead in Tabriz, capital of Azerbaijan province.

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)