The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on June 8 denied a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Guantánamo Bay detainee Adham Mohammed Ali Awad, allowing for continued incarceration of the Yemeni national by the US government. A three-judge panel unanimously upheld the district court's decision, which referred to Awad's role in armed conflict as "gossamer thin," but still denied the detainee's request for relief from indefinite incarceration.

A natural gas pipeline exploded June 8 near the town of Darrouzett in the Texas Panhandle's Lipscomb County, killing two construction workers and injuring three others. The men were working for a contracting company hauling caliche when a bulldozer struck the pipeline. Fire trucks responded from a number of nearby counties, including from across the state line in Oklahoma. A video of the site showed a blackened patch of grassland hundreds of feet in diameter, with the smoldering carcasses of three 18-wheel trucks, a van, a flatbed truck and two tractors.

World oil consumption dropped by 1.2 million barrels a day last year, the biggest decline since 1982, according to a study released June 9 by BP. "Energy developments in 2009 were dominated by a global recession and, later in the year, a tentative recovery," said Tony Hayward, BP's embattled chief executive who's become a media fixture in the wake of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. "We can't know how durable this recovery will be," he added. "But the data show changes in the pattern of global energy consumption that are likely to indicate long-term change."

Mexican and US authorities are investigating the death of a 14-year-old boy who was shot late June 7 near the Juárez-El Paso crossing, apparently by a US Border Patrol agent. Eyewitnesses said Sergio Hernández was playing with friends in a dry area of the river that forms the border. Crossing momentarily into the US with his friends, he was chased by a patrol agent. He ran back onto Mexican soil, hid behind a steel wall—and was shot in the head when looked out.

As many as 2,000 Mexican federal police and Sonora state police, supported by helicopters, invaded the Cananea copper mine on the night of June 6, firing tear gas and attacking and beating workers who were defending the mine. With the police having cleared the mine, managers from Grupo Mexico, the mine owner, took control of the facilities. The company reported that it had 2,000 "contractors" ready to go to work as soon as it was safe to do so.

After 16 years, Peru's single-chamber Congress finally passed into law on May 19 the rights enshrined in International Labor Organization Convention 169, which commits nations to protecting indigenous and tribal peoples. In 1994 Peru ratified ILO Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which establishes in article 6 the right of native peoples to be consulted on matters affecting their territories. In the intervening years, some 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been opened to oil companies, and mining projects on indigenous lands have proliferated in the Andean sierras.

Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the state-owned oil company, has accused BASF Corp., Murphy Energy Corp. and three other US companies of knowingly buying stolen natural gas condensate from Mexican bandits, according to a lawsuit filed in Houston federal court. Pemex Exploracion y Produccion, the company's production unit, accused the companies of facilitating a black market in natural gas condensate stolen from Pemex's Burgos Field on Mexico's Gulf Coast. As much as $300 million in liquids have been smuggled across the border in hijacked tanker trucks since 2006, Pemex asserts.

From the Center for Constitutional Rights, June 7:

CCR Endorses New Report Showing Evidence of Bush Administration
Human Experimentation on Men in CIA Secret Detention
Violations of Nuremburg Code and Role of Health Professionals
In Secret Torture Program Require Criminal Investigation
Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights issued the following statement in response to a new report by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the "Enhanced" Interrogation Program. Download the report at http://phrtorturepapers.org.