Forced exit

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 462.

Patient confidentiality

After more than two months in a Cuban clinic, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's ailing president, was officially said to have returned home, to a military hospital in Caracas. The government earlier released a photograph of the president lying in bed, and said he was unable to talk because of a breathing tube in his throat. See article

Rafael Correa, Ecuador'sleft-wing president, was easily re-elected for a new four-year term, with 57% of the vote. His party also won a big majority in the National Assembly. See article

Yoani Sánchez, a Cuban blogger, was allowed to leave the island for an 80-day foreign tour, the result of the recent abolition of exit controls under which she had been denied permission to travel for five years.

Boyko Borisov, Bulgaria's prime minister, announced the resignation of his government after thousands of people took to the streets to protest against high electricity prices and austerity measures. Mr Borisov had sacked his finance minister and proposed a reduction of electricity prices, but the protests continued. See article

Serzh Sargsyan won a new five-year term as president of Armenia in an election marred by allegations of fraud and the lack of a serious challenger. The opposition Heritage party claimed many ballots had been thrown away, but did not say whether it would challenge the result.

A presidential election in Cyprus will go to a second round on February 24th. Nicos Anastasiades, the front-runner, who is pushing for a bail-out from the European Union, is expected to win after taking 45% of the vote in the first round. See article

A court in Moscow postponed a pre-trial hearing to March in a posthumous case against Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who died in prison in suspicious circumstances. Mr Magnitsky had been arrested after accusing officials of tax fraud, but was himself accused of those crimes. His death led to a diplomatic row between Russia and America.

A 10,000-tonne meteor disintegrated over Chelyabinsk, a city in Russia near the border with Kazakhstan. Its break-up released 500 kilotonnes of energy, equivalent to the yield of a large nuclear bomb, blowing out windows and injuring more than 1,000 people. See article