June is out!

Our June issue -- a warm-up to the enormous undertaking that has been our first-ever Top 500 Companies issue, in July -- is nonetheless a strong book, with some excellent work worth noting:

Jorge Garretón and Paulo Prada teamed up to produce a truly model story on increasing royalties on foreign extraction companies. It started out with Jorge noticing that Chile -- always reticent to tax foreign investors due to the country's pariah status during the Pinochet years -- was talking about finally adding on a royalty to copper production. We knew Venezuela had just done the same, and that other countries, notably Brazil, were talking about it. News Editor Forrest Jones drafted Paulo in Rio to pull together some regional reporting, and a great story resulted. It talks about borders being crossed (money, commodities, policy), saw a clear trend in the market and explained it well, and it was fully and highly sourced, with ministers and executives galore.

If it's screwy news you want, search no more. Spanish Editor Andrés F. Velázquez managed to talk with Ecuadoran President Lucio Gutiérrez days before he was deposed. And Correspondent Wayne Bernhardson in Buenos Aires found a guy making money in post-default Argentina taking dogs to the beach.

Meanwhile, Brazil Correspondent Margarida Pfeifer did some great reporting on the money pouring into Viracopos airport in Campinas; Priscila Guilayn in Madrid explained how Bajaras airport is aiming to become the center of Europe for Latin American travelers; and Mexico Corrspondent Marisol Rueda shed some light on a burning issue for the region's hundreds of thousands of small companies -- how to export in a world where China rules on price. Just turn on the light. (More on China and Brazil from Correspondent Ken Rapoza, too.)