HAVANA, Mar 07 (IPS) - Hugo Chávez of Venezuela was the president who made the most visits to Cuba, where flags are flying at half-mast in official mourning for his death Tuesday Mar. 5, and where his friend and political mentor, Fidel Castro, survives him.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Mar 07 (IPS) - Haiti is poised to enact major reforms to its penal code to make it easier for victims of rape to prosecute their attackers.

BOGOTA, Mar 07 (IPS) - Victims of crimes of the state want their recommendations to be taken into consideration by the peace talks between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas that are seeking to end half a century of armed conflict.

GAZA CITY, Mar 07 (IPS) - "In Gaza we don't lead normal lives, we just cope and adapt to our abnormal lives under siege and occupation," says Dr. Mona El-Farra, a physician and a long-time human rights and women's rights activist in the Gaza Strip. On International Women's Day, when many of the world's women are fighting for workplace equality and an end to domestic violence, Farra and the majority of Gaza's women fight for the most basic of human rights.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 07 (IPS) - The 1992 Carandirú massacre of 111 inmates shot down in what was Brazil's largest prison was documented in thousands of print and televised news reports, as well as five books and a popular film.

ROME, Mar 07 (IPS) - Around the world, but especially in the planet's poorest regions, women represent a life force that renews itself daily, sometimes against all odds.

DOHA, Mar 07 (IPS) - North Korea has vowed to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the United States, hours ahead of a U.N. vote on whether to level new sanctions against Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test.

WASHINGTON, Mar 07 (IPS) - While the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama says it would like to improve relations with Venezuela in the aftermath of the death Tuesday of President Hugo Chávez, officials and independent analysts here believe any rapprochement will take time and faces political obstacles both here and in Caracas.

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 07 (IPS) - Despite the great strides made in Latin America with tobacco control legislation, the industry deploys a range of strategies to circumvent the restrictions imposed on cigarette advertising, social organisations and experts complain.

OSLO, Mar 07 (IPS) - For the first time, ‘humanitarian diplomacy' is being deployed to drive home the need for banning nukes - though under the self-imposed exclusion of the P5, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, who own a crushing majority of the 19,000 nuclear weapons capable of destroying the world many times over.