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Haiti's November 28 election was marred by widespread fraud. Despite the call of all the leading candidates but one to cancel the exercise, officials with the UN Security Council mission as well as the United States, Canada and Europe are voicing satisfaction with the result and urging the country’s electoral commission to press ahead with a second-round runoff vote in January.

The streets of Ayala, the old financial capital of Manila, were taken over by about 5000 people on November 25 in a protest against the growing use of contract labour. Philippine Airlines, owned by the Philippines second richest man, is the latest company to sack its workforce and rehire them as contract workers – with lower wages and without the benefits and security guaranteed to formal, permanent workers.

The 190th Annual Meeting of Southern Baptists, held on November 16 in Columbia, South Carolina, approved a resolution calling its pastors to preach against homosexuality — “to uphold the biblical standard of human sexuality against all onslaughts” — but also to “love and show compassion toward homosexuals and transgendered persons”. Mixed in with this “hate is love” doublespeak is a great deal of defensiveness about the loss of social status by the US religious right.

Irish socialist republican party eirigi chairperson Brian Leeson has labelled the Dublin government’s four-year fiscal adjustment plan “a criminal charter for the wrecking of working class communities”. Among the measures contained within the plan are: • A €2.8 billion cut in the social welfare budget. • The gradual increase of the pension age to 68 by 2028 and the reduction of the pension rate for retired public sector workers. • The reduction of the minimum wage to €7.65 an hour. • The raising of university registration fees to €2000.

Portugal's working class brought the country to a standstill on November 24 to press the Socialist Party government to scrap its regressive cuts program. The general strike against European Union-mandated austerity, the first to be organised jointly by Portugal's two main unions since 1988, is the country's largest ever stoppage. Trains and buses did not run, planes were grounded and banking services halted.