News headlines in 2009, page 340

'They burst in aiming machine guns at us. They found him in the hallway, they grabbed him by the hair, they threw him on the floor and they beat him up,' Ida Huenulef told IPS, describing the arrest of her son Miguel, the first indigenous Mapuche activist to be charged under the Anti-Terrorist Law by the government of Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

A prominent international human rights organisation has called for an arms embargo against both Israel and Hamas after finding evidence that both sides used foreign-supplied arms to commit war crimes during the recent conflict in Gaza.

Monday's call by Sen. Richard Lugar for a major re-assessment of Washington's nearly half-century effort to isolate Cuba increases the likelihood that U.S. President Barack Obama will make substantial changes in policy toward Havana beyond those he promised during his election campaign, according to experts here.

Kenya's civil society has rebuffed efforts by its embattled government to restore its tattered image in the wake of waning public confidence in the state. Their major grievance is that the country's problems, including high level graft, are the result of a culture of impunity that has engulfed the nation's top officials and politicians.

The anti-drug, anti-insurgent Plan Colombia is, paradoxically, at the heart of the tragedy involving Awa indigenous people who were murdered this month by the FARC guerrillas.

While the Internet boom in China has given citizens new avenues for self-expression, the government's tight control and censorship of content has made it difficult for the web to act as a platform for any major political dissent.

It was a bus ride from one part of the city to another. Or was it.

At the eleventh hour, just as a permanent ceasefire painfully mediated by the Egyptians after weeks of intensive shuttle diplomacy was about to take effect, Israel suddenly changed its preconditions for a settlement with Hamas.

Senior Egyptian officials have indicated that the new demands raised by Israel for ceasefire could affect the peace negotiations between Israel and Hamas being brokered by Egypt.

‘‘The situation is now very bad, very bad for workers. It is no longer about the workers alone, it is about the government, the companies, everyone. We need to talk. Dialogue is the only solution.’’