World

On January 2, after five months of fighting, the Sri Lankan Army (SLA) finally captured the town of Kilinochchi in northern Sri Lanka.

On January 11, up to 80,000 people braved freezing temperatures in Berlin to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the murder of socialist revolutionaries Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.

Around 6 million signatures, in support of a referendum to amend Venezuela’s constitution and allow all elected public officials to stand for indefinite re-election, were handed over to the National Assembly on January 16.

The below article is an abridged update released by the Committees in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) on January 12. The full article can be found at http://www.cispes.org.

According to recent Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) figures, another 40 million people were pushed into poverty and hunger in 2008 as a result of spiralling food prices. he total number of people suffering hunger and malnutrition has reached 963 million worldwide.

The January 14 announcement by the Sri Lankan government that its forces had completed the capture of the Jaffna Peninsular, effectively bringing all of the historic Tamil nation in Sri Lanka’s north-east under military occupation, was a grim reminder that the Israeli assault on the Gaza ghetto is not the only holocaust at the start of the new year.

Fresh evidence of ongoing US subversion in Venezuela came to light following a January 8 secret meeting held in Puerto Rico between right-wing political leaders, a media baron and representatives from the US embassy in Venezuela.

“We want to believe we are safe here … but the bottom line is that I’ve lost confidence in the Israeli side and that needs to be restored urgently, and it is their duty to restore this confidence”, United National Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) head John Ging told AP on January 13.

Giles Ji Ungpakorn, a political science professor at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University and a well-known socialist activist, has been ordered to appear at a Bangkok police station to be charged under the country’s stiff laws for insulting the country’s monarch.

We have to state and repeat it: we are not witnessing a war in Gaza, but a massacre carried out by the third largest air force in the world against a defenceless civilian population.

Citizens across Cuba have thronged the streets of cities and towns to welcome the “Caravan of Liberty”, a convoy of trucks and buses retracing the path of Fidel Castro and the victorious fighters of the Rebel Army, after the declaration of the defeat of the Batista dictatorship on January 1, 1959.

“Say what they like, the new Sambil is not going ahead”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on December 23.