World

Durban’s University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba is expected to deliver an edict that the UKZN’s Centre for Civil Society (CCS) will close on December 31.

Thousands across Pakistan celebrated the humiliating departure of dictator Pervez Musharraf on August 18.

The Dalai Lama has accused Chinese authorities in Tibet of opening fire on unarmed protesters, and alleged that at least 400 people had been killed since March, according to an August 22 AFP report.

Unemployment in Venezuela dropped from 8.8% in July 2007 to 7.2% in July 2008, the National Statistics Institute (INE) announced on August 14.

Taking advantage of the political capital it gained with the Colombian military rescue of high-profile Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) prisoner Ingrid Betancourt on July 2, the government of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has launched a major crackdown on political opponents and social movement leaders.

For four months following the historic elections for a constituent assembly — which formally ended the monarchy and established a republic — the small Himalayan nation was in a state of limbo as right-wing forces disrupted attempts to establish a national consensus government.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has promised new Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo “all the oil he needs” during a public event in Uruguay after Lugo was inaugurated on August 15.

The admission by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) that it knows the location of loyalist paramilitary weapons dumps, is no surprise considering the involvement of police in the six counties that make up Northern Ireland with loyalist killer gangs over the years, according to Sinn Fein’s Alex Maskey.

Political and social conflict continues to grow in Peru in the wake of a general strike against the neoliberal policies of President Alan Garcia’s government, which saw much of the country paralysed on July 9.

Indonesian labour activist and chairperson of the Deliberative Council of the National Liberation Party of Unity (Papernas), Dita Sari, has declared that she will run for the Star Reform Party (PBR) in the 2009 legislative elections.

With 99% of votes counted, Bolivia’s first indigenous president won a crushing 67.43% vote in the August 10 recall referendum.

On August 7, after a week of border clashes, Georgia’s pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili launched a military attack against South Ossetia.