Aug. 9, 1999 Boris Yeltsin names little-known security chief Vladimir Putin as prime minister, says he wants Putin to succeed him as president.

Aleksandr G. Lukashenko was elected president for the first time in 1994. After 18 years of presidency, he gained finally enough self-esteem this year to admit that he would rather be a dictator than gay. There is a lot to say about such a statement, as when it was made, to whom it was directed, and why. This statement was provoked by Germany’s openly gay foreign minister Guido Westerwelle calling him “Europe’s last dictator.”

According to Human Rights Watch, hundreds of Tibetans returning from India were arrested and forced into political re-education by Chinese authorities. No one is sure of how many Tibetans were detained by the authorities, but sources estimate that at least several hundred Tibetans are placed in detention centers located in cities such as Lhasa, among others.

On March 1, 2012 a judge in Kazan, Russia, ruled that the sister of the soldier Alexander Berbin is entitled to about $2,000 of “moral compensation” for the death of her brother. The story goes like this: during June 2009,a drunk officer, Anatoly Fedotov, asked his subordinate, Berbin, to carry some furniture outside while wearing a gas-mask. Berbin did so, but some time later he took off his mask, upsetting Fedotov. As a result, the officer beat the soldier. In addition to injuries, this stressed Berbin so much that he committed suicide. Fedotov was sentenced to four years in prison while Berbin’s sister was given this ridiculously small “moral compensation.”

To explore the issue of drug violence in Mexico, The MH News interviewed two students of Mexican origin. Martha Segovia ’13, who has lived for a few years in Monterrey, Mexico.

INEGI, the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, reported that the Mexican economy was growing up until the economic crisis in 2009, when it plummetted into a recession. But, since 2010, it has stabilized itself and the estimated growth until 2016 is above 3.2 percent. These numbers form a pleasant picture, however deceitful.

In a photograph taken by Scott Dalton in 2010, a little girl wearing a dress sparkling with pink sequins is holding her trick-or-treat bucket in front of her face. However, this ordinary scene does not depict the reality of Juarez, Mexico, a border city enveloped in drug cartel battles for access to the U.S. drug market. A more telling photo taken at the same time shows a woman sprinkling white flour over reddish-black blood stains on a dark street, with a young boy looking on. The people in the background walk on indifferently. Some heads turn to look back, while others don’t seem like they notice anything peculiar. Signs of violence have become ordinary for the residents of Juarez.

With her slender hips, slim waist, blooming bust, long neck and high cheek bones, the tanned blonde struts towards the couch. The handsome man drinking a soda grins in hearty anticipation. But she walks by him, on to the shirtless dude devouring a beer on the rocks. To find out what happens next, you don’t need a porn movie—just watch a Budweiser commercial.

In 1976, Muhammad Yunus began to offer small loans with low interest rates to poor individuals living in rural India. Offering these small loans was the initial stage of microlending—a system that provides an individual without collateral, steady employment or credit history with a line of credit to start a business.

“Humanitarians are abjectly ineffective at selling their causes. Any brand of toothpaste is peddled with far more sophistication than the life-saving work of aid groups. Do-gooders also have a penchant for exaggeration, so that the public often has more trust in the effectiveness of toothpaste than of humanitarian aid,” said Nicholas D. Kristof in his article in the New York Times about The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer.