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From August 26 to 28, the XXIst United Nations Conference on Disarmament Issues – one of the most important forums for dialogue on nuclear non-proliferation – took place in the Japanese city of Niigata. “The Nuclear-Armed States must lead by example by reducing their nuclear weaponry”, stated Kanat B. Saudabayev, Secretary of State of Kazakstan.

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OEA), José Miguel Insulza, assured that the body would not recognize the electoral process proposed by the de-facto Government of Honduras. He stated that the elections would only be valid if the constitutional president Manual Zelaya were allowed to return.

It is a mistake to think that certain problems do not concern us, only because they happen thousands of miles away from us and affect people we have never met, or whom we perceive as “different” from us. The world we live in is increasingly interconnected, and what happens in seemingly remote places can affect all of us in the form of violence, conflict, insecurity.

The Governor of the province of Mendoza, Celso Jaque, in a document of adhesion to the World March for Peace under the auspices of the World Without Wars Foundation, appealed to people to “unite in a commitment to work for freedom, dialogue, equality, respect and justice, and to achieve peace. May this be an opportunity for light to dispel the shadows that cloud our future”.

A study published by the University of Heidelberg reveals the gap between the media-generated image of war and the nature of the actual conflicts. Although the Second World War ended with great aspirations for world peace, since that time the total number of world conflicts has risen in a moderate, but constantly upward, curve.

The 53-member Commonwealth voted to fully suspend Fiji because it has failed to schedule elections by October of 2010. The Commonwealth objects to the decision by the government of Commodore Frank Bainimarama, who seized power in a 2006 coup, to delay elections until 2014. Mr Bainimarama wants to reform the voting system which he says works in favor of ethnic Fijians.

Northrop Grumman personnel ready a visiting unmanned Global Hawk aircraft for takeoff at Brunswick Naval Air Station. A pilot from Patrol navigates the craft remotely from Patuxent River (Md.) Naval Air Station. The Global Hawk’s approximately stay represented the first time one of the military’s vaunted drones had ever landed from a New England location.

Celso Jaque, the governor of the Argentine province of Mendoza, has signed the Provincial Declaration of Interest in the World March for Peace and Non-Violence. The government’s backing was announced in the Official Gazette on Monday, June 8th. The global journey’s completion will be commemorated with a ceremony in Punta de Vacas Park, Mendoza, on January 2nd of 2010.

More than 12,000 members of Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarian minority community have taken to the streets in protest at a new language law introduced on Tuesday. The new law limits the use of minority languages. Anyone speaking Hungarian in public buildings, for example, could be fined. More than half-a-million ethnic Hungarians live in Slovakia.

The ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is in Washington, where he will meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday. Zelaya criticized the Honduran coup regime for blocking his return and going ahead with an election campaign. Zelaya’s meeting with Clinton comes days after a State Department review advised that his ouster be officially declared a “military coup.”