Tens of thousands of people celebrated in the streets after Tabare Vazquez was elected Uruguay's President on Monday 1 November. The election of Vazquez shows that Latin America's people are decidedly turning to the left when it comes to finding solutions to poverty and inequality. Free article

What does it take to sign a new EU Constitution these days? Well, apparently for host Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi the vital ingredients are €9 million, a lavish setting, thousands of Dutch tulips, along with 7,000 heavily-armed police officers, hovering helicopter gunships, a circling fighter squadron of F-16s enforcing a no-fly zone, a little bit of Beethoven and lots of Enya to drown it out and a famous Italian film maker, Franco Zeffirelli, to direct the TV coverage. Free article

Cormac, An Phoblacht's satirical cartoonist, is taking a break Free article

Colombia is a beautiful country better known for its ugly statistics. Nearly 50 trade unionists have been killed so far this year, and that is only a small part of the final figures of those whose lives end violently in a country where unemployment rates are upwards of 80%. Edgar Paez, responsible for the international department of the trade union SINALTRAINAL, knows the risks very well. Free article

Ever get the feeling you have been completely had? Well if you're an Eircom customer or were one of the first batch of shareholders back in 1999, this must be the feeling you have this week, after it was disclosed that last year the Eircom board knocked back coalition government proposals for a €1.8 billion deal to finally build an islandwide broadband network. Free article

Iranian opposition group, the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran (PMOI), has slammed a European offer of incentives aimed at getting the Tehran regime to stop uranium enrichment, saying it included a promise that the EU would continue viewing the guerrilla Mujahedin-E-Khalq or MEK (the People's Mujahedin) as a terrorist organisation. Free article

The campaign to free West Belfast man Kieran Milnes has been supported by the Sinn Féin President and West Belfast MP. Gerry Adams' support comes after the public launch, on Thursday 28 October, of the campaign to have Milnes released from Maghaberry Prison, where he is serving a nine-month sentence for assaulting a youth he caught trying to steal his girlfriend's car in the Poleglass Estate in October 2002. Free article

Sinn Féin West Belfast MP Gerry Adams says a racist attack on the home of four Filipino nurses in Violet Street off the Springfield Road on Sunday 31 October was "despicable". Free article

Sinn Féin MLA for North Belfast and party spokesperson on poverty, Kathy Stanton, has said that the latest figures released today from the Save the Children Fund indicating that over 32,000 children in the North of Ireland are living in severe poverty are extremely worrying and urgent attention is needed. Free article

FORMER Mayor of Limavady, Sinn Féin Councillor Ann Brolly and her husband, East Derry Assembly member Francie Brolly, are to have their home secured under the British Government's Key Persons Protection Scheme (KPPS) after a judge overturned an earlier decision by British Secretary of State Paul Murphy to exclude the pair from the scheme. Free article