NOW that enough time has passed with Britain voting to leave the European Union (EU) without any major catastrophe occurring (frankly, should we even be surprised that a former imperial power still thinks that squabbles between its cabinet members and parliamentary backbenchers would lead to the end of the world, ‘as we know it’?), it may be a good time to think about what ‘Brexit’ means for political action, especially on the Left. The result of the British referendum should have hardly been surprising.

FRESH after their success in implementing regime change in Brazil through patently undemocratic means, the right wing in Latin America, aided and abetted by their allies in Washington, have now set their sights on Venezuela. The mainstream newspapers in the United States are busy writing the obituary of the Left in the American continent. An electoral setback for the Left in Argentina, where the Peronists lost the presidency by a narrow margin earlier in the year, was welcomed as great news in the West.

THE assassination of the Taliban leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour by an armed drone dispatched on the express orders of the American president, seems to have quashed all hopes of Afghan peace talks reviving in the near future. Mansour was killed along with the driver of the taxi car they were traveling on a highway in a remote part of Pakistan's Balochistan province. Though the car along with its occupants was charred beyond recognition, the passport which Mansour was carrying was found intact and displayed to international media.

The following are the remarks made by Raul Castro Ruz, president of the Council of States and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba,  at the closing session of the 7th Summit of the Association of Caribbean States on June 4. FIRST of all we would like to convey our sympathy and solidarity to the family of the great boxing champion Muhammad Ali; to the American people and particularly to the African American community, whose rights he always defended; and, to the international sports community.

THE vote in the lower house of the Brazilian parliament (the Chamber of Deputies) on April 18 to forward the case for the impeachment of the president, Dilma Rousseff, to the upper house (senate), was the first big step taken by the coup plotters in ousting the popularly elected president of the Republic. Dilma, Brazil's first female president, had won reelection only eighteen months ago for a second four year term in office.