More than 200 people demonstrated outside the official residence of Governor George W. Bush yesterday. Twelve were arrested protesting the scheduled execution of Texas prisoner Gary Graham. Yesterday, a day of national protest against his execution, was June 19th, or Juneteenth, which marks the day word reached slaves in Texas that they were free — two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Gary Graham’s supporters are calling on 10,000 people to go to Huntsville on Thursday to protest his execution. Meanwhile, George Bush was confronted about the death penalty on a campaign stop yesterday in California.

The Navy this week plans to hold its largest bombing practice on Puerto Rico’s Vieques Island since exercises were suspended last year. Documents about the Navy’s plans were released today by Puerto Rico’s Planning Board. According to the documents, five ships from the USS George Washington battle group will fire as many as 600 rounds onto the Navy’s range starting Wednesday. Aircraft will drop between 550 and 830 so-called dummy bombs during the exercise, which could last two to five days. Activists bitterly oppose the Navy’s use of Vieques and blame its operations for environmental damage and a high rate of cancer among residents. Two stray bombs killed a civilian security guard on the range last year. Today, outside the White House, a press conference will be held by Hector Rosario, a Dartmouth graduate student who is on a hunger fast protesting the bombing of Vieques.

And now to news in what many call the Vieques of Korea, Maehyang-ri, South Korea. Eleven protesters were arrested yesterday after they occupied a U.S. Air Force bombing range in a campaign to close it down. A total of 12 protesters got through a cordon of riot police and a barbed wire fence surrounding the Koon-ni Training Range, 50 miles southwest of Seoul. Six were quickly arrested. Another five hid on the range before a police helicopter swooped down and picked them up. In front of a nearby U.S. military camp, about 200 protesters, including college students, also demonstrated, shouting, “Yankee, go home! Shut down the firing range!” U.S. aircraft resumed training exercises on Monday at the Koon-ni range as scores of protesters scuffled with riot police. For the first time in a month, A-10 attack jets conducted bombing exercises on the range, while F-16s strafed the beach. In May, Democracy Now broke the story of a U.S. warplane dropping six 500-pound bombs near the village of Maehyang-ri on May 7. Villagers there say the bombing injured several people and damaged some 170 homes.

This news from the State Department: The United States has quietly dropped the use of the term “rogue state” from its foreign policy lexicon, in favor of the broader categorization “state of concern,” to allow greater flexibility in its dealings with those nations. State Department spokesperson Richard Boucher said “rogue state,” a description reserved for the seven countries designated by Washington as state sponsors of terrorism, quote, “has outlived its usefulness.” The change does not affect sanctions that are placed on the seven countries designated terrorism sponsors by Washington. Boucher said the change reflects a recognition that some are progressing in U.S. eyes and could no longer be fairly identified as rogues.

Spanish police discovered 36 immigrants crammed into a truck on the same day British authorities found the bodies of 58 Asians in the back of a lorry. The Civil Guard police force said in a statement the immigrants — 32 Moroccans and four Algerians — had not eaten in four days and had little to drink, when the truck was pulled over by a highway patrol late on Monday in southern Málaga province. They were in weak condition, and some had wet clothes, suggesting they had just crossed the Strait of Gibraltar.

Up to 35,000 doctors in South Korea, upset about a law that will hit their pocketbooks, began an indefinite strike today, throwing the nation’s healthcare system into havoc. The doctors will strike until the government steps in to remedy the situation, but South Korean President Kim Dae-jung said the government would not negotiate at the cost of people’s lives.

A unanimous Supreme Court decision yesterday reaffirming the federal government’s preeminent role in setting U.S. foreign policy overturned a Massachusetts statute that was designed to protest Burma’s human rights record by denying state contracts to companies that do business with that country. We’ll talk with the author of the bill in just a few minutes.