America’s Senate is poised to vote on health-care reform

• AMERICA’S Senate is poised to vote on a sweeping overhaul of the country’s health-care system proposed by Barack Obama. Backers of the bill need 60 votes to ensure that opponents cannot block its passage. They should be able to muster exactly that number if Joe Lieberman, an independent who was formerly a Democrat and has usually voted with his old party, does not follow through on a threat to side with the Republicans over his objections to some provisions of the revised bill. Mr Obama has called for the bill to get through the Senate before Christmas.

• BRAZIL’S tendency to forget about the past will be challenged on Monday December 21st. The president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, is to propose the setting up of a truth commission to investigate torture during the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985. Though the behaviour of Brazil’s leaders was less far less appalling than in Argentina and Chile, which have already gone through the process of confronting past sins, no one has yet been held to account for the murder and widespread torture of dissidents. The commission will allow a rare glimpse into a troubled period of Brazil’s recent history as no one has yet been faced prosecution after an amnesty law was pushed through a compliant Congress in 1979. …