Venezuala have re-elected Hugo Chávez Frías for a fourth term after some of the most intense elections in the past decade. He will now hold the presidency until 2013, fourteen years since his first election in 1999.
Thousands of mentally ill people across Ghana, including children as young as nine, are being sent to “prayer camps” where they are often kept against their will and tied to walls or trees and forced to fast.
Palestinians face serious abuses in the Hamas criminal justice system, including arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention, torture, and unfair trials. Hamas has executed at least three men convicted on “confessions” apparently obtained under torture since 2007.
A recent report on coral loss from the Great Barrier Reef has pointed the finger at cyclones and Crown of Thorns starfish. The real culprit is human activity, and until we reduce port activity and pollution, coral will be unable to bounce back.
Merchants and shopkeepers at Tehran’s Bazaar went on strike today as they protested against the free fall of the national currency, with the Iranian rial hitting an all-time low of 34,000 to the dollar.