RIGHTS-VENEZUELA: No Change in Patterns of Police Brutality and Impunity

Eloísa Caro, a 26-year-old domestic worker, was blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten about the face, verbally abused and nearly suffocated with a plastic bag last year when she was summoned by the judicial police in the Venezuelan capital to give a statement on a robbery in the house where she worked.

Q&A: Corrupted Politicians Expected to Fight Corruption

Monica Macovei is at the centre of a national dispute over cleaning up the Romanian government.

CORRUPTION-HONDURAS: International Aid Hanging by a Thread

The Honduran government of Manuel Zelaya has not been able to overcome the country’s reputation for corruption, to the extent that it is on the point of losing millions of dollars in aid from the Millennium Challenge Account, a fund set up by the United States to help extremely poor countries.

RIGHTS-KENYA: Protests Against a Law Aimed at the Heart of the Media

Members of the media in Kenya took to the streets Wednesday in a silent protest against a law that would compromise press freedom by forcing them to divulge sources. Passed by parliament earlier this month, the Media Council of Kenya Bill is now awaiting presidential assent.

HEALTH-US: Defence Contract Workers Fall Through Insurance Cracks

New statistics from the United States Department of Labour offer greater insight into the number of defence contractors killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, but questions remain about compensation for injured or dead contract workers and their families.

RIGHTS-MEXICO: 16,000 Victims of Child Sexual Exploitation

The child pornography and commercial sexual exploitation industry enjoys total impunity in the Mexican capital, according to a report by the Mexico City Human Rights Commission.

ARGENTINA: Defenders of Small Farmers Harassed and Threatened

A group of hooded men armed with shotguns threatened the leader of a small farmers’ organisation and the delegate of an international human rights organisation in a northern Argentine province after they reported an incident of corruption involving both Argentina and Spain.

GUINEA-BISSAU: African Paradise for South American Traffickers

Guinea-Bissau has become the first African narco-state, where South American traffickers have set up their headquarters and hideouts for large-scale cocaine smuggling operations into the European Union (EU).

POLITICS-SIERRA LEONE: Women As An Antidote to Corruption?

Sierra Leone will hold general elections Saturday with a number of significant achievements in hand, not least maintaining peace for five years.

ARGENTINA: Suitcase Stuffed with Cash Triggers Scandal

A high-level official of the Argentine government resigned Thursday in the midst of a scandal over his responsibility for the arrival to the country of a Venezuelan businessman carrying 800,000 dollars in undeclared cash on a government-hired jet.

CAMBODIA: World Bank Faces Kleptocracy Test

For all its talk of good governance, the World Bank continues to choose its words carefully when reprimanding errant states it has big stakes in. What is happening in Cambodia is typical.

TRADE-CHINA: Safety Complaints Force Beijing to Tighten Quality Control

Dogged by a plethora of reports in the foreign media highlighting problem Chinese goods and worried that product-safety recalls are spiralling into a major problem for its export juggernaut, Beijing has shifted gear to defend its battered "Made in China" reputation.

PARAGUAY: Justice for Supermarket Fire Victims – An Impossible Goal?

Three years after the deadly fire at the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket, the worst civil disaster in the history of Paraguay, relatives of the 364 people killed and more than 500 injured in the blaze say they feel that convictions of those responsible are further away than ever.

RIGHTS: EU Firms Supplying Burmese Military via Indian Link

For nearly 20 years, the European Union has applied a ban on weapons sales to Burma in protest at the brutal military dictatorship in the country. According to human rights campaigners, this embargo risks unravelling because firms from several EU countries are involved in building military helicopters destined for Burma.

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: ‘Parapolitics’ Immunity Loophole Closing

Colombia's Attorney General has asked that all cases against politicians for alleged links with rightwing paramilitaries commanded by drug traffickers be tried in the capital city. Human rights lawyers are applauding the move.

POLITICS: Developing Nations Sidelined for IMF Top Job

A coalition of developing countries at the International Monetary Fund issued a tacit warning Monday that the highly political process of selecting the next IMF chief may be intimidating non-European countries from putting forth candidates, and further discrediting the institution.

CORRUPTION: World Bank Debars Indian Firms in Fraud Probe

The World Bank ended a several-year investigation Monday by debarring two Indian pharmaceutical companies, citing corrupt procurement practices in a controversial Bank-funded reproductive health programme.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA: Big Bucks Behind Forest Blaze, Haze

The annual phenomenon that is oddly called the ‘haze’ is back and beginning to blanket parts of Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei in thick, acrid smoke from the forest fires in Indonesia, mainly from the Kalimantan and Sumatra islands.

MALAYSIA: Murder Trial Exposes Shaky Justice System

A decade after Malaysia's criminal justice system earned worldwide condemnation for bending the rules to send a prominent politician to jail, it is back in the dock and under attack for allegedly stretching the rules in a sensational murder case involving top personages.

CORRUPTION: Bandar Bribery Case Crosses the Atlantic

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating allegations of bribery by the British defence contractor BAE Systems to Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, a high-ranking member of the Saudi royal family with wide contacts and relations here.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: On the Brink of Collapse?

The lives and well-being of hundreds of thousands of civilians are threatened by a rising tide of violence and lawlessness in Central African Republic (CAR), according to Amnesty International, which called Tuesday for the immediate deployment of U.N. peacekeeping force there.