As of early on July 6, with 99.51% of polling places counted, Mexican officials said former México state governor Enrique Peña Nieto of the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) had been elected president with 38.22% of the valid votes cast on July 1. Center-left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador followed with 31.57% of the votes, and Josefina Vázquez Mota from the ruling center-right National Action Party (PAN) came in third with 25.42%. Gabriel Quadri, the candidate of the centrist New Alliance Party (Panal), trailed with 2.28%. The results—which matched a rapid count the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) carried out the evening of July 1—followed a substantial recount of the votes after charges of irregularities.

The US Senate is expected to issue a report on July 17 about international money laundering through the London-based corporation HSBC, Europe's largest bank; much of the focus is reportedly on the laundering of drug money through the group's Mexican subsidiary, HSBC Mexico. The US Justice Department is also investigating, and the bank is expected to end up paying a fine of more than $1 billion, both for the Mexican operation and for HSBC's business activities with parties in Iran, in violation of US trade sanctions against that country.

Oil prices rose by over dollar to approximately $103 a barrel July 16 after a US Navy ship fired at a fishing boat off the United Arab Emirates (UAE), killing one on board and injuring three. The fishing boat reportedly failed to heed warnings. No link to Iran was claimed in the incident, but it came two days after an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps naval commander boasted that Iran has the capability to blockade the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's parliament is currently considering a bill calling for the strait to be closed until sanctions are lifted. (Reuters, The Nation, Pakistan, July 16) The UAE has meanwhile just completed a new overland pipeline that strategically bypasses the Strait of Hormuz. Abu Dhabi, one of the UAE states, has started exporting its first crude from the new pipeline, shipping the oil from the sheikhdom of Fujairah to a refinery in Pakistan. (Bloomberg, July 16) (See map.)

On the morning of July 14, a group of 45 activists invaded Scottish Coal's Mainshill Open Cast Coal Site near Douglas, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, and shut it down for the day. Machines and equipment were occupied and all work at the site was halted completely. This is the first action at Take Back the Land!—a protest camp in the Douglas Valley that activists hope to maintain for the next week. Activists say the British government has approved expansion of the mine without the consent of local communities in South Lanarkshire. (Coal Action Scotland, July 14) UK Coal has meanwhile threatened to close Britain's largest coal mine Daw Mill in Arley, near Coventry, England, jeopardising 800 jobs, if it cannot reach a new agreement with unions on pay and working conditions. (The Independent, March 15; The Guardian, March 14)

Fighters of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and allied Islamist factions pushed Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) out of their last foothold in northern Mali, the town of Ansogo, about 100 kilometers north of Gao, on July 12. For the first time since the rebellion pushed Malian government forces out of Azawad in April, the entire region is now completely in Islamist hands. The remaining MNLA fighters are believed to have fled into Niger. Islamist militants have surrounded Gao with landmines, making it almost impossible to enter. But Britain's Guardian newspaper says it has obtained film footage depicting foreign Islamists patrolling Gao, dragging the bodies of senior Tuareg insurgents through the town behind pick-up trucks and conducting public whippings of three young people for "offenses" under sharia law, including smoking and having sex outside marriage.

Newly announced plans by China's central government for the "resettlement" of the last remaining nomads over the next five years have sparked protests in Inner Mongolia, with traditional Mongol herders accusing authorities of the illegal expropriation of grazing lands for development projects. At least four protests by Mongol herders have been reported over the last month. The most recent protest took place on July 2 in Imin Sum (Yimin Sumu in Chinese; "Sum" is equivalent to township), Eweenkh Banner (Ewen Keqi in Chinese; "banner" is equivalent to county), Hailar district. According to an appeal letter to the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) written by the Imin Sum protesters, local herders have lost large tracts of their grazing lands to government projects including highway and rail line construction, mining and power plants. The process began in 1984 when Chinese state-run company Hua Neng Coal Electricity developed up a coal mine on local grazing lands.

After hundreds of Embera Chamí and Embera Katío indigenous people from Colombia's departments of Chocó and Risaralda marched in Bogotá July 11, the city government met with their leaders and brokered a deal for them to return to their lands which were usurped some 10 years ago by paramilitary groups. Under the deal, the some 70 Embera families are to return to their lands within 60 days, accompanied by a delegation from the national government to assure their security. (Radio Caracol, El Espectador, Bogotá, July 12) But just days earlier, Embera leader José Vicente Jarupia Domicó in Los Canales de Tierralta community, Córdoba department, was assassinated in a hail of bullets fired by two men on a motorcycle. (El Universal, Cartagena, July 5)

As the giant Mother Earth flag from Cajamarca arrived in Peru's capital of Lima on July 12, a demonstration of some 1,000 construction workers with the General Confederation of Workers of Peru (CGTP) marched in solidarity with the struggle against the Conga gold mine project—as well their own demands of better pay and working conditions. In reference to the protesters killed in Cajamarca, marchers carried signs reading "¡Ni un muerto más, Sr. Humala!" (Not one more death, Mr. [President Ollanta] Humala!). The demonstration was addressed by lawmakers Rosa Mavila, Javier Diez Canseco, Jorge Rimarachín and Lima council member Marissa Glave. After the rally in Lima's Plaza San Martín, the moment there to the liberator José de San Martín was spray-painted with graffiti against the Conga project. The CGTP said this was done by young students, not unionists, and a volunteer crew of workers scrubbed the statue clean. The rally saw a brief clash between National Police in full riot gear and student protesters.