José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria Do Espirito Santo da Silva, were ambushed and killed on May 24, while riding their motorbikes on a road close to their home in the village of Nova Ipixuna, in Brazil's Para state. The couple had spent years campaigning against illegal logging in the area, including setting up roadblocks to stop timber vehicles. An ear was removed from each of the corpses, in what authorities call a clear sign that someone was trying to send a message. Police admit they suspect the hit was ordered by "loggers in the region." Eremilton Pereira dos Santos, a young local man who went missing last week, was also later found dead. His relatives say he may have been killed because he'd witnessed the da Silvas'’ murderers fleeing the scene of the crime. Ribeiro told a Manaus conference entitled TEDx Amazônia last November that he was in danger of his life. "I denounce the loggers and the charcoal makers, and because of this they think that I should not exist," he told the audience. "I could be here today talking to you and in one month you will get the news that I disappeared. I will protect the forest at all costs. That is why I could get a bullet in my head at any moment... As long as I have the strength to walk I will denounce all of those who damage the forest."

From the New York Times, June 2:

The Libyan woman whose mistreatment by the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi made her a symbol of its brutality has been deported against her will from her temporary refuge in Qatar to the Libyan rebel stronghold of Benghazi. Eman al-Obeidi gained international attention in March when she told foreign journalists that she had been abducted and gang raped by Qaddafi militia. She was arrested, and later smuggled out of the country by a defecting soldier. She was in Qatar awaiting asylum elsewhere. A spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said she was deported Thursday by force and without explanation. A spokesman for the rebel authority in Benghazi said she was free to leave if she wanted.

A spokesman for Prime Minister David Cameron denied there are any British combat troops on the ground in Libya folloing press reports claiming SAS forces have been spotted in Misrata. The spokesman said: "Any military activity we undertake will be in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1973. I am not making any statement about people who have been photographed." The Daily Mirror ran photographs on its front page purporting to show 11 former SAS and Parachute Regiment men aiding the rebel forces in Misrata. The Guardian said it had learned from its own sources that ex-SAS soldiers were helping NATO to identify targets in Misrata. But the prime minister's office insisted that the only British personnel in Libya were a joint Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and Ministry of Defence team in Benghazi. The spokesman said: "I don't think it would be right for me to go into details about the security arrangements for the team. But clearly we take their security very seriously and have arrangements in place. We have been very clear about what the MOD/FCO team is there to do. They provide various forms of support for the Transitional National Council, to help them in the organisation of their internal structures, helping them with communications." (BBC News, June 1)

A new bill in the Knesset would change Jerusalem neighborhoods with Arabic names to Hebrew ones—Mamilla, Talbiya or Holyland becoming the Hagoshrim, Komemiyut and Eretz HaTzvi. MK Tzipi Hotovely (Likud) introduced the bill, and it has received endorsements by many other Knesset members from both the Likud-led ruling coalition and the opposition. "The purpose is to strengthen the bond to Jerusalem by enforcing the use of Hebrew names for the capital's neighborhoods where Jews reside," said Hotovely. The bill would apply to any neighborhood with Jewish residents. Old names would remain unchanged, but have a secondary status to the new Hebrew ones. The Jerusalem city government would have to complete the Hebraization of all city neighborhoods, replace the signposts and not use the previous names in any official matter. Several Arab-majority districts would be affected. The Palestinian town of Abu Dis (dissected by a security barrier with the western part under the Jerusalem government) will become Kidmat Zion. (YNet, May 30)

The US Department of Homeland Security announced the week of May 16 that it was extending Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians for another 18 months, until Jan. 22, 2013. TPS is a program that allows undocumented immigrants to stay in the US because of temporary conditions in their homelands that would prevent them from returning safely, such as a natural catastrophe. TPS was first granted to Haitians living in the US without documents in January 2010 following an earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti. (Haïti Libre, Haiti, May 17; Homeland Security announcement, May 19)

Armed with machetes and knives, Haitian national police and local officials destroyed some 200 tents in a homeless camp on a public space in the Delmas 3 neighborhood northeast of downtown Port-au-Prince the morning of May 23. Camp residents, who were living there because they lost their homes in a devastating earthquake in January 2010, ran for cover or protested the action while their temporary shelters were demolished. Wilson Jeudy, the mayor of Delmas, a subsection of the capital, claimed that the operation's target was not the earthquake victims but criminal gangs he said had been using the camp.

Some 500 people marched in Guadalajara, capital of the western Mexican state of Jalisco, on May 20 to demand that the federal and state governments honor their commitments to protect land that is sacred to the Wixárika (Huichol) indigenous group. The protesters' main focus was the 22 concessions that the federal Economy Secretariat has given to First Majestic Silver Corp (FMS), a Canadian mining company, to extract gold and silver in some 6,000 hectares around Real de Catorce in the north central state of San Luis Potosí. They say this was done without the consent of affected indigenous groups.

Thousands of Hondurans gathered at Tegucigalpa's Toncontín International Airport on May 28 to greet former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) as he returned from a 16-month exile. After arriving in a Venezuelan plane proceeding from Managua, Zelaya told the crowd at the airport that he would continue to fight for a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the 1982 Constitution; a similar call for a Constituent Assembly was the pretext for a military coup that removed Zelaya from office on June 28, 2009. "We are going to power with the popular resistance," he said.