News headlines in October 2011, page 9

'It was very tough, like being in prison,' says 29-year-old Algerian immigrant Sid Hamed Bouziane, in slow Spanish, about his 28-day stay at the Immigrant Detention Centre, or CIE, in the southern Spanish city of Málaga.

'Political power will be fought for metre by metre in the Oct. 30 local and regional elections in Colombia, because this is a country imbued with violence, with different armies disputing different parts of the territory,' said Alejandra Barrios, director of the election observation mission (MOE).

Ninety percent of the non-governmental organisations in Mexico are founded and run by women, says journalist and women's rights activist Lydia Cacho Ribeiro, making them primary targets of violence, including spillover from Mexico's escalating drug wars.

When the former president of Cape Verde, Pedro de Verona Rodrigues Pires, was recently awarded the five-million-dollar African Leadership prize, the ex-Portuguese colony that he headed for nearly 10 years was singled out as one of the key African success stories for 'good governance', including multi-party democracy, rule of law and respect for human rights.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has withstood political pressure, bad weather, police violence, and over a thousand arrests, and is continuing to grow in New York City a month in.

President Cristina Fernández's smashing victory in Argentina, with nearly 54 percent of the vote, raises questions about how she will handle her growing supremacy.

The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) began a wide process of consultation among its members this week with a view to an upcoming national conference charged with charting policies on issues that range from generational renewal and the internal functioning of the party to dealing with corruption and other social problems.

The long-time dictator who ruled Libya for nearly four decades with an iron fist may be gone, but racial hatred surfaces increasingly now by the day.

Nine months after a popular election toppled the dictatorship of former Tunisian president Zine Abadine Ben Ali, voters headed to the polls Sunday to cast their ballots for fresh leaders to rewrite the laws of the country’s political system.

The window to limit global warming to less than two degrees C is closing so fast it can be measured in months, a new scientific analysis revealed Sunday.