Venezuela is heading for another electoral battle, after President Hugo Chávez kicked off 2009 by putting forward a new proposal to reform the constitution so that all elected officials may be indefinitely reelected.

The eerie calm reigning on the green hills of south Lebanon was broken Thursday by the sound of explosions as three Katyusha rockets were launched into Nahariya and Western Galilee areas in Israel.

Fears about the impact of the global financial crisis in Eastern Europe may be overblown. While economic growth is likely to slow down in 2009, it is improbable that countries like Romania and Bulgaria will be hit as hard as Britain or the U.S.

Through a difficult 18 years since the end of Soviet political dictatorship, Russia has steadily made its way back on to the global stage.

Twenty years after the Chinese communist party deployed tanks to crush protests by disgruntled students on Tiananmen square, the country is facing the same volatile mix of rising unemployment and economic gloom that sparked the 1989 mass pro-democracy marches.

Prime Minister-designate Najib Razak, who succeeds Abdullah Badawi in March, faces a by-election that will test whether voters, especially majority Malays, still support the 13-party coalition government which suffered massive setbacks in general elections last year.

Millions of Brazilians usher in the new year by wading into the sea, dressed in white, scattering flowers on the water as an offering to the Afro-Brazilian deity Iemanjá, in return for her blessings for the year to come. But few of them realise that this tradition is rooted in a religion fighting for survival in the face of prejudice, racism and intolerance.

Nearly three weeks after the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) announced that they would release six hostages, the government of right-wing President Álvaro Uribe has agreed to provide security guarantees for the operation, which is expected to take place this month.

The devastating Israeli firepower, unleashed largely on Palestinian civilians in Gaza during two weeks of fighting, is the product of advanced U.S. military technology.

In 2003, two journalists from Radio-Télévision Libre des Milles Collines were convicted of war crimes in the Rwanda genocide -- illustrating the dangerous role media can play by relaying hate speech or rumours during times of violent conflict.