One protester was gravely hurt with a head injury as National Police attacked a demonstration against the planned Conga gold mine project in Peru's northern city of Cajamarca June 21. Seven were arrested as police unleashed tear gas, and protesters responded with sticks and hurled rocks. Authorities said five police officers were also injured in the confrontation in the city's Plaza Bolognes—which came as Cajamarca's regional president Gregorio Santos was leading a rally against the mine in the city's Plaza de Armas, just a few blocks away. (El Comercio, June 21) When two rights attorneys—Genoveva Gómez of the Defensoría del Pueblo (human rights ombudsman) and Amparo Abando of the National Human Rights Coordinator— entered at city's National Police headquarters to inquire after the seven detained, they were themselves attacked by police, both suffering bruises. (Celendin Libre, June 22)

Three people, including two children, were killed when a bomb planted in a donkey cart exploded at a Sufi shrine in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, on June 21. Worshippers had gathered for a weekly event at the at the Panj Peer shrine, which houses the graves of several Sufi saints, as well as popular Pashto poet Rahman Baba. The donkey, whose front legs were tied with a rope, was blown to pieces. Almost simultaneously, another bomb exploded at a mosque in Quetta, Baluchistan, killing two worshippers and wounding 13 others. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, but militants such as the Taliban vehemently oppose Sufism, a form of "folk Islam" that they consider heretical. (Pakistan Express Tribune, June 22; AFP, June 21)

A judge in Nicaragua on June 20 ruled that the man who allegedly plotted the fatal attack on revered Argentine folk-singer Facundo Cabral last year will be charged in the Central American country for drug trafficking and money laundering. Costa Rican national Alejandro Jimenez Gonzalez AKA "Palidejo" is currently being tried in Guatemala, where Cabral was killed last year. The criminal court in Managua said it would prosecute another 20 people accused of running a trafficking network that stretched from Costa Rica to Mexico. Nicaraguan police arrested 11 of Palidejo’s associates last month—including Julio César Osuna, a former judge who once served on Nicaragua's electoral council. Osuna's brother was also among the detained.

A mutiny by rank-and-file National Police demanding higher wages spread across Bolivia on June 22, with an estimated 4,000 officers occupying barracks. The mutiny began the previous night, when some 30 officers and their wives seized control of the barracks of the elite anti-riot force (UTOP), just a block from the presidential palace in La Paz. Striking officers also sacked and set fire to furniture and documents at a police office in downtown La Paz that processes disciplinary complaints. Officers quickly joined the protest in major cities including Santa Cruz, Cochabamba and Oruro, demanding direct talks with President Evo Morales. The president returned early from the UN climate summit in Brazil to deal with the crisis, and is currently in the palace, protected by rifle-weilding military police.

Now that Julian Assange has taken refuge in London's Ecuadoran embassy and is seeking asylum in the Andean nation, we have three questions. The first, predictably, is only being asked on the political right: Is this supposed champion of transparency and freedom of information going to have anything to say about restrictions on press freedoms in Ecuador? Fox News with great glee quotes Human Rights Watch: "Ecuador's laws restrict freedom of expression, and government officials, including [President Rafael] Correa, use these laws against his critics. Those involved in protests marred by violence may be prosecuted on inflated and inappropriate 'terrorism' charges." Fox also notes that Ecuador has an "insult law" in place known as descato, "which historically has criminalized free speech and expression. Under Descato, which is part of the Ecuadorian Criminal Code, any person who 'offends' the president could be sentenced up to two years in prison and up to three months for 'offending' any government official."

The recent milestone of Planet Earth reaching 7 billion people unleashed the predictable tsunami of Malthusian claptrap. Now a new study documents the obvious—the problem is not how many people, but the sheer acreage of human flesh on the planet, regardless of how many bodies it is distributed amongst. From Live Science, June 17:

A meeting of 60 Iranian trade unionists was raided by security forces June 17 in the northern city of Karaj, and all were arrested. Most were members of the Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' Organizations, including longtime labor activist Mahmoud Salehi. Most were released the following day, including Salehi, but nine remain in the custody and have been transferred to the special Intelligence Office in the city of Rasht. Advocates note that the meeting was peaceful, and authorities showed to warrants for the arrests.

At the People's Summit being held on the sidelines of the Rio +20 UN environmental summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, leaders of the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of the Bolivian Oriente (CIDOB) denounced President Evo Morales for violating the rights of indigenous peoples in Bolivia's eastern lowlands. Announced CIDOB vice president Nelly Romero: "We have unmasked the double standard that [Morales] has in his discourse on the international level, making believe that he is a defender of indigenous peoples, of the rights of the indigenous peoples of Mother Earth, of the natural resources and the forest." Celso Padilla, president of the Continental Council of the Guaraní People, noted the death of two indigenous leaders in a traffic accident on the cross-country march now underway to oppose construction of a highway through the TIPNIS indigenous reserve. "This wouldn't have happened if the president had not been infatuated with building the highway through the TIPNIS; the only one responsible is him." (Erbol, June 20)