POLITICS-TANZANIA: New Cabinet Will Confront Vast Challenges

A new, leaner cabinet for Tanzania was sworn in Wednesday, its predecessor having fallen apart last week amid a corruption scandal.

ROMANIA: Communist Agents Get the Upper Hand

The Constitutional Court has halted the activities of the National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives (CNSAS), the institution responsible for tracking collaborators with the former communist secret services.

DRUGS-MEXICO: Army to Continue Policing Until 2012

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, has joined those calling for the Mexican army to be withdrawn from the fight against drug traffickers. But her request will not be acted on until at least 2012, when President Felipe Calderón’s term of office is up.

PARAGUAY: Victims of Supermarket Fire Protest ‘Lax’ Sentences

Survivors and relatives of victims of the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket fire in Paraguay were overcome with indignation and grief at the reading of the court’s ruling on the disaster, which killed 364 people and injured over 500 in 2004.

GUINEA-BISSAU: One Step from Becoming First African “Narco-State”

Guinea-Bissau is an ideal African springboard for Latin American mafias to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into the wealthy European Union market.

RIGHTS-GUATEMALA: Still Waiting for Justice, 28 Years On

"I suffer because three of my kids were murdered. One of them, who was just 17, was killed when the Spanish embassy was burnt down. I am sad because in Guatemala there is no justice," Catarina Lux, a 68-year-old indigenous woman from the northwestern province of El Quiché, told IPS Thursday.

CORRUPTION: Treaty Could Be Working – Or Not

Ongoing international talks on the question of how to strengthen a U.N. treaty against corruption are doomed to failure unless governments agree to take practical actions to demonstrate compliance, according to observers who are attending a major anti-corruption summit in Indonesia this week.

PERU: Logging Firm Accused of Using Workers’ Identities for Tax Fraud

Impoverished local residents of the Amazon jungle town of Orellana in Peru have filed a complaint against a logging company for using their identity documents to commit tax fraud in illegal timber sales worth more than 200,000 dollars.

EUROPE: Dubious Aid Handed to Kenya

Just one day after Kenya's bitterly disputed presidential election took place in December, Nairobi received an aid payment worth nearly 41 million euros (60.5 million dollars) from the European Union.

RIGHTS-PERU: Death Squad Member Implicates Fujimori

In the early 1990s, the administration of then Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori negotiated an amnesty for an army death squad in exchange for keeping secret the government’s involvement in two massacres in which 25 people suspected of being left-wing guerrillas were killed.

MEXICO: Crime-Ridden City Where Anything Goes – And Frequently Does

"Keep your heads down, close your eyes and put your hands on your knees, bitches," said the man who climbed into the old taxi, holding up the couple inside at gunpoint. Seconds later another man joined him, wielding a butcher’s knife. Another armed robbery in the Mexican capital was under way.

FINANCE: Global Meltdowns and the Perversions of Lucre

No explanation of the financial malaise afflicting the world economy would be complete without mention of Wall Street's bankrolling of politicians, pay practices, and shifting of risk to investors.

INDONESIA: Suharto’s Death Shows ‘Reformasi’ Merely Shift in Power

The death of former Indonesian president Suharto shows the country’s ‘reformasi’ (reformation) as nothing more than a shift in power instead of a gradual process to democracy, say analysts here.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA: ASEAN Leaders Condone Suharto Era Corruption

‘’We pray to Allah to bless Pak Harto’s soul and to place him among the blessed,’’ Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahamad Badawi is reported to have told the local media after news broke of the death on Sunday of Indonesia’s former president Suharto.

INDONESIA: The &#39Kemusuk Thug&#39 Is Finally Dead

Minutes after hearing of Suharto’s passing away on Sunday, Marco, a militia leader in the capital, donned battle fatigues and raced to the former president’s mansion on Cendana street to help with guard duties.

Q&A: ‘Barring Electoral Fraud, the Opposition Will Triumph’ in Paraguay

The countdown to Paraguay’s presidential elections in April has begun, and the candidate for the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC), former Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, looks likely to pose a serious threat to the six-decades-old Colorado Party monopoly on power.

RIGHTS-CAMBODIA: Land Grabbing – A Serious Concern

At the beginning of January, Ros Sovann was just another private security guard one sees standing outside fancy restaurants and the homes of the rich in Phnom Penh. By month end, the 28-year-old had catapulted from obscurity to become the symbol of rage spreading through Cambodia over land grabbing.

DEVELOPMENT-MALAYSIA: Civil Society Stalls Eight Billion Dollar Project

Civil society groups here are mulling their next move after having stalled a massive, private project to build close to 40 high-rise towers on a precious green lung on this land-scarce Malaysian island.

KENYA: Media’s Role in the Election Fallout

As Kenya’s tenth parliament met for the first time last week, the violence that rocked the country after the announcement of Mwai Kibaki as the presidential winner in the Dec. 2007 elections had largely died down. But the country is bracing for more violence and turmoil.

POLITICS-MALAYSIA: Hearing Exposes Mahathir, His Corrupt Times

A public hearing into corruption in the higher judiciary is giving Malaysians a rare peep into the way top judges were appointed, demoted or promoted during the tenure of former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad.

EUROPE: Sex, Lies and Suicides – the New Greek Tragedy

On Dec. 20, three days after his resignation as secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Christos Zahopoulos jumped from the fourth floor of his flat in Athens city centre. He has partly recovered but is going to face serious long-term health problems.