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On March 1, Uruguay formally resumed diplomatic relations with Cuba, which had been broken in 2002 by right-wing president Jorge Batlle. Cuban foreign minister Felipe Perez Roque, in Uruguay for the inauguration of new President Tabare Vasquez,
Ian Jamieson, Fremantle After four weeks on strike, 430 workers involved in the expansion of the BHP-owned Worsley Alumina plant near Bunbury in south-west Western Australia appear close to victory in a dispute in which individual strikers were
Jim McIlroy, Brisbane He was the "minister for black-outs, now he's the minister for out-Blacks", Aboriginal leader Sam Watson told Green Left Weekly on March 4, describing the new Queensland minister for Aboriginal policy, John Mickel. Mickel
Doug Lorimer "Residents of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province some 100 kilometres west of Baghdad, have started to flee the city following the latest offensive launched by US Marines and the [puppet] Iraqi army", IRIN news, the news service of
Lee Sustar, Chicago It's still far from clear who ordered the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut on February 14. But under the guise of the "war on terror", the US is seizing an opportunity. Washington is working

On the evening of March 2 at Jakarta airport, Dr Ed Aspinall, a lecturer in South East Asian history at the University of Sydney, was prevented from entering Indonesia.

REVIEW BY ROGER ANNIS Cuba: A Revolution in Motionby Isaac SaneyFernwood Press and Zed Press240 pages, $25 How was it possible for poor and beleaguered Cuba to win twice as many Olympic medals as Canada? Why was Cuba able to send more than
The left-wing Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist (Liberation) won seven seats, up from five previously, in the 243-seat state assembly of Bihar in the month-long state elections completed in early March. One of the new seats won was in
Most unemployed people receiving social security payments live below the poverty line. Single jobless people receive benefits of almost 25% less than the official poverty line. The amount received by unemployed people relative to the poverty line
Depleted uranium Hundreds of thousands of Gulf War veterans are now suffering from a syndrome which eminent scientists like Doug Rokke, former head of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, attribute to exposure to depleted uranium. DU has been
Kiraz Janicke, Sydney During the University of Sydney's orientation week, Students Against War, which has been running a campaign against Australian companies profiting from the occupation of Iraq, planned to picket the ANZ bank's stall. ANZ is
According to Ben Raue, the Greens candidate for the Werriwa by-election (former Labor leader Mark Latham's seat), the Macquarie Fields riots have demonstrated the failure of the major parties to address poverty in western Sydney. "The actual car