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No sooner had information come out that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was undergoing surgery in Cuba than the international media was full of speculation and rumours regarding his imminent demise. Projecting their hopes that an illness could succeed in removing Chavez where military coups and assassination attempts had failed, the right-wing Venezuelan opposition went into overdrive. They demanded the president step down and hand over power to the vice president.

Resistance organised a visit to Villawood detention centre on July 3. Twenty people came to show solidarity with the asylum seekers inside. We visited four different �鶹��ý that house families and single people from many countries including Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iran and Iraq. I spoke with a family who live in Villawood with their three young children. The youngest two had never known life outside detention. They live in their own small house, and once a week a member of the family is allowed to go shopping, with guards, so the family can cook for themselves.

It’s the best news on climate change for years, and you’ve probably not heard about it. Spain’s new Gemasolar power plant produced uninterrupted clean energy all day and all night for the first time on July 3. That’s 24 hours of zero emissions power, here and now. Gemasolar is a concentrated solar thermal power plant. It uses a field of mirrors to concentrate solar radiation in a central tower. What’s new about Gemasolar is that the plant can store solar energy for up to 15 hours. That’s baseload renewable energy, supplied all through the night.

The federal government on June 29 it had met its “commitment” to move child refugees out of detention and into community-based accommodation. In October last year, 738 children were held in detention. Widespread public fears for the mental and physical damage caused by long-term detention forced the government to act. The immigration department said it would “begin moving significant numbers of children and vulnerable family groups out of immigration detention” into community detention.

Thirty five people attended a forum on June 25 entitled “100% Equality” hosted by WA Greens MLC and spokesperson for diversity, gender and sexuality, Lynn Maclaren. The forum discussed the campaign for marriage equality and other issues facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex community.