World

Stuart Munckton & Roberto Jorquera On June 21, Venezuelan interior minister Jesse Chacon announced that Venezuelan security had uncovered a plot to assassinate President Hugo Chavez. He said the plot was linked to those who organised an

Feminist Gloria Steinam joined around 30 people to protest the opening of De Beer's first US store, telling media that the "Bushmen are the real diamonds of the Kalahari". The Botswanan government has been evicting the Bushmen from their traditional

Norman Brewer, Bremen It took three things to trigger the historic and promising unity process between the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and the Electoral Alternative for Jobs and Social Justice (WASG), which was formed through last year's

Doug Lorimer In stark contrast to the endless coverage of the supposed "rescue" of Australian-born hostage Douglas Wood, most media has been silent on revelations of hundreds of Iraqi Arabs and Turkmen kidnapped by US-backed Kurdish police and

Three legal experts appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in February to investigate Jakarta's trials of those responsible for atrocities during East Timor's 1999 independence referendum has described the trials, in which all but two accused

On June 19, the Observer published leaked extracts from the US submission to the G8 action plan on climate change. They revealed that Washington intended to force the removal of any reference to the fact that climate change is a 'serious threat to

Glenn Walker Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold is facing increasingly fierce opposition to its proposed bi-national "Pascua Lama" open-pit mine on the border of Chile and Argentina. The powerful multinational, notorious in Australia for its

Rohan Pearce US troops shot Farqad Mohammed Khinaisar at 8am on May 29. She was 15 minutes away from the Baghdad high school she taught at when a convoy of soldiers from the 3rd Infantry Division opened fire on her car. Her death was the end result

Eva Cheng Hong Kong's phoney election for a new chief executive took a farcical twist on June 16 when the legally required secret ballot was done away with, leaving no possibility for even isolated protest votes to be cast. With strong

Rohan Pearce In the lead-up to Afghanistan's September parliamentary elections, additional foreign troops, most likely including Australians, are being deployed to prop up the central administration of President Hamid Karzai. Karzai relies on

Rohan Pearce The May 13 massacre in the Uzbek city of Andijan proved acutely embarrassing for Washington. Uzbek President Islam Karimov has been an important ally in the White House's "war on terror" and the regime has received substantial US aid

A May 21 attempt to transfer a Saharawi prisoner from Laayoune, in Western Sahara, to Morocco's north has sparked a wave of protest. Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975. Protests on May 24-27 against the transfer were brutally attacked by