A startling article in the New York Times May 8 noted that Honduras in late 2010 passed a constitutional amendment drawn up by the administration of President Porfirio Lobo that allows the creation of a separately ruled "Special Development Region" within the country—where the national state would have limited, if any, authority. The article, entitled "Who Wants to Buy Honduras?," portrays a vision for privately run islands of order and security amid the squalor and violence of the impecunious Central American country. This was apparently the brainchild of a young Lobo aide, Octavio Rubén Sánchez Barrientos, who was taken with the ideas of US economist Paul Romer, theorist of "economic zones founded on the land of poor countries but governed with the legal and political system of, often, rich ones."

With anger still growing in Honduras over the May 11 raid on the village of Ahuas that left four dead, the White House shows no sign of reconsidering the Central American Regional Security Initiative, under which the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and Pentagon's Southern Command are coordinated with regional security forces. Officials boast the new cooperation is working, stating that last year the US monitored more than 100 small planes from South America landing at isolated airstrips in Honduras, with no interference. In contrast, two such flights were intercepted in May—including the one involved in the deadly raid at Ahuas. "In the first four months of this year, I'd say we actually have gotten it together across the military, law enforcement and developmental communities," William R. Brownfield, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, told the New York Times. "My guess is narcotics traffickers are hitting the pause button. For the first time in a decade, air shipments are being intercepted immediately upon landing."

On June 1, a tribunal of the World Bank's International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) granted jurisdiction to Canada's Pacific Rim Mining Corp, allowing the final phase of the company's arbitration case against El Salvador to go forward. The tribunal dismissed objections filed by the Government of El Salvador, ruling that the case can proceed under El Salvador's own Foreign Investment Law. Since 2009, the Vancouver-based company has been seeking $100 million from El Salvador for having turned down the company a permit to mine gold in the northern region of Cabañas.

Three prominent lawmakers publicly resigned from President Ollanta Humala's ruling Gana Perú coalition June 4 over the government's handling of protests against the Xstrata Tintaya copper mine in Cuzco's Espinar province. Legislators Rosa Mavila and Javier Diez-Canseco issued a joint letter addressed to Humala, charging that his government had taken a "confrontational" stance against protesters, and rejected dialogue. "Those who were defeated in the elections have become co-governors," the legislators said, referring to Humala's tilt to the pro-corporate politics he campaigned against last year. Cuzco region congress member Veronika Mendoza issued her own statement, calling a press conference to announce her resignation from the Gana Perú bloc, at which she wielded a Health Ministry study on the Xstrata Tintaya mine she said had been suppressed. "In this document, it is confirmed that the maximum limits for arsenic and mercury have been exceeded" in the area around the mine, she said. "Quantities of heavy metals above the permitted levels were found in water used for human consumption." (Cronica Viva, Peru.com, June 7; Peruvian Times, June 5; RPP, June 4)

Chinese state media say 17, including 12 children, were wounded in an explosion at an "illegal" Islamic school in Hotan, a city in restive Xinjiang province June 6. Official sources say staff at the school set off explosives when police came to "rescue" children who were being held at the school, after receiving complaints from parents. Dilxat Raxit of the German-based World Uyghur Congress, however, said the children were hurt when police used tear gas in the raid. (AP, China Daily, June 6)

Amnesty International on May 5 urged Israel to release all prisoners of conscience and administrative detainees or immediately try them under international fair trial standards. In a new report, "Starved of Justice: Palestinians detained without trial by Israel," Amnesty states that Israel has been using a number of measures—such as Military Order 1651 of 2010, the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law of 2002, and the Emergency Powers (Detention) Law of 1979—against Palestinian residents in the West Bank. Although the laws officially apply to everyone, AI reported that the laws are being used to detain only Palestinians. Additionally, AI found that most of the detainees were never informed of the evidence presented against them although they have the right to appeal and are entitled to legal counsel of their choice. With its report, AI concluded that injustice against detainees is still ongoing.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has almost completely gone off the world media's radar screen—despite the fact that it isn't over yet. It won brief coverage, at least, when the US National Academy of Sciences revealed last month that radiation from Fukushima had been detected in bluefin tuna caught off the California coast. "The levels of radioactive cesium were 10 times higher than the amount measured in tuna off the California coast in previous years," according to AP on May 30, while reassuring: "But even so, that's still far below safe-to-eat limits set by the US and Japanese governments." The perhaps more alarming news a few weeks earlier failed to win as much coverage—technicians have detected a leak the Reactor No. 1 containment vessel, with radioactive water almost certainly escaping into the environment. Reuters less than comfortingly tells us that plant operator TEPCO "may have to build a concrete wall around the unit because of the breach, and that this could now take years."

Tokyo's notoriously nationalist governor Shintaro Ishihara is pushing a plan for the metropolitan government to purchase and annex the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea—known to Chinese as the Diaoyu Islands, and claimed by China although under Japan's actual control. The uninhabited islands are now privately owned by the Kurihara family, who bought them decades ago from descendants of the previous Japanese owners. With East China Sea hydrocarbon resources at stake, the barren islands have become a flashpoint for Sino-Japanese brinkmanship—most recently in September 2010, when Japan Coast Guard patrol boats confronted a Chinese fishing vessel. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has received more than ¥1 billion in donations from citizens over the past month for its plan to buy the islands. The scheme is an implicit dig at the national government, which Ishihara accuses of not doing enough to defend the islands from China. But his explicit wrath was aimed at Beijing: "An endlessly hegemonic China is now trying to get control of the Pacific, and targeting Senkaku is one of the steps for doing that. We must lock the doors of the Japanese house more carefully when they have clearly shown their intention to intrude and steal things."