The United States is operating ”floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees. Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic.

When the Maldives features in the media it is usually in the form of a paean to its silver sands, its magical island resorts in the crystal-clear waters of the Indian Ocean. Little is heard of the ways in which journalists who challenge the omnipotence of the government are harassed and suppressed.

The United States government has been accused of trying to undermine the Hugo Chávez government in Venezuela by funding anonymous groups via its main international aid agency. Millions of dollars have been provided in a “pro-democracy programme” that Chávez supporters claim is a covert attempt to bankroll an opposition to defeat the government.

For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but then many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.

The familiar bearded face gazes out from a billboard over a sunlit old Havana beside the reassuring slogan Vamos bien. Close by, another poster wishes the world’s longest-serving leader a happy birthday and calls for ”another 80” years.
Now, however, for the first time since he led his rebel army into Havana in 1959, the man who epitomises Cuba has stepped down, albeit temporarily.