Leaders of Palestinian political party Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, released a document outlining their guiding principles at a press conference in the Qatari capital Doha on May 1.
Much coverage focused on the document’s acceptance of Israel’s 1967 boundary as the basis for establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The document also includes pronouncements on how Hamas views the roots of the conflict, the role of Palestinian resistance and its position towards Jewish people.
Federal Minister for Education and Training Simon Birmingham has outraged students with his announcement of cuts affecting higher education that will come in the federal budget on May 9. Speculation is rife about the impact the cuts could have on students.
The cuts revolve around a 7.5% increase in university fees. But the reality of the fee hike could be much worse.
In conjunction with the budget’s $2.8 billion in cuts to university funding, universities could be forced to raise student fees by a minimum of 25%.
The demands of the hunger strikers are for basic civil rights. There are 6500 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including 300 children. About 500 are being held under “administrative detention” — meaning they are held without trial by court orders that can be renewed indefinitely.
Despite the scale of the hunger strike and huge popular support enjoyed by the prisoners and their campaign for “freedom and dignity”, Israel shows no signs of acceding to any of the prisoners’ demands to end their ill-treatment.
Afghan anti-war activist and feminist Malalai Joya sent the solidarity message below to a protest organised by Sydney Stop the War Coalition against the visit of US Vice President Mike Pence to Australia on April 29.
Joya was elected to Afghanistan’s National Assembly of Afghanistan from 2005 until early 2007. She was dismissed from her seat for denouncing the presence of warlords and war criminals in the Afghan Parliament.
At the same time as President Enrique Pena Nieto deports undocumented migrants trying to enter or pass through Mexico, his own party, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), is under-paying migrants and refugees in its T-shirt factory.
Yangkunytjatjara and Matutjara language speakers celebrated the first Native Title determination in the south of the Northern Territory on May 4.
At a special sitting of the Federal Court, Justice Reeves handed down a consent determination over an area of about 12,500 square kilometres near the South Australian border.
The area, comprises the pastoral leases of Victory Downs, Mt Cavenagh, Mulga Park and Umbeara, which will continue to operate as cattle stations.
More than 2000 Honduran campesinos have taken over 10 farms in La Lima belonging to the Tela Railroad Company, a successor to the dissolved United Fruit Company, La Prensa reported on May 3.
The campesinos, demanding better working conditions and health care from the company, vowed to indefinitely occupy the space until they take action.
The staff and volunteers at Green Left Weekly send warm solidarity greetings to Fairfax workers taking strike action against the drastic job cuts being pushed by management.
We applaud you for taking this action — deemed illegal by this country’s draconian anti-union laws.
You are setting an example of what breaking bad laws is all about: protecting people’s livelihoods and standing up for your right to a well-paid job.
There are calls for the remainder of the Warrnambool jumps carnival to be called off after a horse was killed in the first jumps race on May 3.
Two other horses fell in the same race and 40% of horses did not finish their races.
The fatality comes after the death of Wheeler Fortune at the Oakbank carnival last month which prompted the SA Racing Minister Leon Bignell to label jumps racing “barbaric”.
The full vote in the lower house of Brazil’s Congress on the government’s plan to reform the pension system will be delayed until the end of May, amid ongoing protests against it.
If passed, the controversial bill would cut benefits, raise social security contributions by civil servants and set a minimum retirement age of 65 years in a country where people work on average until 54 years.
The United States was the scene of three large national mass mobilisations from April 22 to May 1 challenging President Donald Trump’s agenda.
In April the Federal Court ordered the oil and gas multinational Chevron to pay $340 million in tax. For the past few years this company has gotten away with paying no company tax at all by claiming that it did not make a profit.
The truth is it made billions, but the company inflated its expenses by having its Australian operation take a loan from a US subsidiary with an interest rate 25 times higher than the market norm.