World

Chinese women in the key industrial city of Wuhan, Hubei province, are forced to pay heavy fines and write "self-criticism" if found to have lost their virginity before marriage, according to a China News Digest dispatch on May 15. A

MOSCOW — Voters in Russia who doubted the integrity of President Boris Yeltsin can rest easy. The country's ruler has kept his word. On May 27 a cease-fire agreement with Chechen insurgents was signed in the Kremlin, and the

Russian elections: Yeltsin running scaredMOSCOW — Is President Boris Yeltsin about to romp home an easy winner in the Russian presidential elections, pulling in the support of previously uncommitted voters and overwhelming

Are the people of Taiwan entitled to determine their own political future, particularly whether or not to reintegrate with China? This question was sharply posed by Beijing's intimidating military measures last year and its

The Oromo people are the single largest indigenous ethnic group of Africa. They live in east Africa in several countries, but mostly in Oromia, now included in Ethiopia. The Oromo people are crying out for their freedom but the

The representation of Tahiti's leading independence party, Tavini Huiraatira (Polynesian Liberation Front), was significantly boosted following recent elections for the Territorial Assembly. While the pro-French forces led by Gaston

The Alternative Information Centre has recently published the first comprehensive study on Palestinian refugees, written by three Palestinian scholars, Bilal Shakhsheer, Waheed Qirsh and Nayef Jredat. The authors claim that the

A breach in the blockade A partial victory in the fight to end Washington's immoral blockade against Cuba was won on May 26, when the US Treasury Department released more than 300 computers it had seized to prevent them from going to health

The assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in November started the race toward Israel's May 29 elections in earnest. As the elections drew closer, the lines between Labour — the so-called party of peace, which enjoys strong backing

The murder and conspiracy trial of apartheid-era defence minister Magnus Malan and other top military officers in the Durban Supreme Court has heard evidence that the vicious terror campaigns conducted by the "third force" against the

MOSCOW — The 1986 accident at Chernobyl was not the first case in which the Soviet nuclear industry contrived to pour huge quantities of deadly radionuclides into the environment. In terms of total radioactivity released, the

The recognition by the British government's own advisory committee of a possible link between BSE ("mad cow disease") and the fatal CJD in humans threw the government into panic and turmoil. For the nine years that BSE was