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The case of a young Armenian forced sentenced to two and a half years for refusing military service was taken up by a number of high profile international organisations, including Amnesty International. Today the European Court of Human Rights ruled that individuals have a right to conscientious object and called on Armenia to immediately introduce civilian alternatives.

The scenes that plagued Latin America through the 1980s bear a striking resemblance to those in the Arab World since Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze in Tunisia nearly 30 years later. In Latin America, protests reflected the rising frustrations of the middle class, marketplaces were bombed by those angry at incumbent autocrats and citizens rallied against police brutality.

Politicians in rich countries use to cry to the sky and tear their hair out, warning against migrants and refugees’ alleged extraordinary threats and exceptional danger, while blaming them for all the troubles that their obedience to the “market lords” and the “war lords” has been causing.

The world is on course to miss United Nations hunger reduction targets set in 2000, despite successes in curbing extreme poverty, a UN report said Thursday. In 2000, the world body’s 192 member states launched eight Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015 and the 2011 progress report showed mixed results on the first target of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon set an October target for rival Cypriot leaders to secure a broad accord on reunifying the divided Mediterranean island, after both parties agreed on Thursday to intensify talks. “I have every expectation that by October the leaders will be able to report that they have reached convergence on all core issues, and we will meet that month in New York.”

Canada was to officially end its combat mission in Afghanistan on Thursday, after nine years of fighting which saw it lose 157 troops and spend more than $11 billion dollars. With popular support for the war sapped at home, most of the nearly 3,000 Canadian soldiers, based mainly in the dangerous battleground of Kandahar, have packed up and gone home.

The extraordinary scene was captured by video yesterday of the police backing down from an attempt to detain a Senegalese national living in Madrid. The multiracial neighbourhood of Lavapies in Madrid was holding an assembly as part of the M-15 movement when, according to police a man attempted to board a train without a ticket and was stopped by staff who called the police.

A social phenomenon exploded almost fifty years ago: young people began to make their voice heard and took control of the social space. Different cities witnessed the simultaneous uprising as this clamour became the visible form of the much-discussed Gasset y Ortega thesis on generational dialectics as the driving force of history with extraordinary empirical evidence.

Thousands of people flocked to a Washington arena Wednesday to celebrate the 76th birthday of Tibet’s spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who urged followers to mark the occasion by practicing compassion. “Happiness — it is not money, it is not material things, it is not power. It is (inside), full of self-confidence.”

Reporters Without Borders firmly condemns last week’s murder of journalist Luis Eduardo Gómez in Arboletes, in the northwestern department of Antioquia, and the threats that two journalists, Medellín-based Mary Luz Avendaño and Bogotá-based Gonzalo Guillén, have been getting in unrelated cases.