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Farmers, businessmen and Traditional Owners from north-west NSW travelled to Adelaide on May 3 to tell Santos and its shareholders at the company AGM it will face a rural uprising if it proceeds with the Narrabri coal seam gasfield.

They were joined by South Australian locals who oppose Santos’s plans to drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight, telling Santos it has “No Licence to Drill” because these projects do not have community support.

Emma Wilde Botta looks at US President Donald Trump’s latest effort to “break the regime” in Iran — by renouncing the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor.

Donald Trump’s announcement that the US will withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose economic sanctions will intensify geopolitical conflicts in the region. It threatens to spark a wider war, engulfing the region and possibly the world.

British team Leeds United FC is under fire after announcing late last month plans to tour Myanmar despite the mounting allegations of human rights abuses and “ethnic cleansing” in the country.

The club revealed its two final post-season games would be in the Myanmar cities of Yangon and Mandalay. The tour will be sponsored by a bank that has been linked to the government and, consequently, the hundreds of thousands human rights abuses reported by refugee Rohingya Muslims.

A group of young Palestinians in Gaza has founded “The Crutches”: the first football (soccer) team for amputees injured during the last three Israeli attacks on the besieged territory.

Palestinian civil society groups have accused Giro d’Italia cycling race, which started its first leg in Israel on May 4, of covering up Israel’s war crimes in Gaza and its secret police’s repression against Giro protests, said Kerry Smith.

Staff and employers of the Murdoch University Student Guild have reached an in-principle agreement in the latest round of bargaining after four weeks of negotiations.

Despite the short time frame, the negotiation team for the workers, which constituted an NTEU Industrial Officer and two Murdoch Guild staff members, were able to keep members in the loop throughout the entire process.

Staff and student rally against the cuts.

Staff and students at James Cook University (JCU) in Townsville and Cairns have refused to accept course and job cuts proposed by the university’s management.

The highlight of the campaign was a 120-strong student-led rally on April 30 at the Cairns campus, the largest student protest action in more than a decade at JCU. Students also joined the community protests called by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) branch on April 27.

 

The 18th annual Green Left Weekly Comedy Debate is set to take place on June 16 at 6.30pm at Brunswick Town Hall. Bookings are available online at Trybooking.    

The event has been running since 2000, each year raising a significant amount to contribute to the annual Green Left Weekly Fighting Fund.

More than 50 people attended the annual May Day Dinner held in Geelong on May 5. Speakers at the dinner included Maritime Union of Australia women’s liaison officer Mich-Elle Myers and Victorian Allied Health Professionals Association secretary Craig McGregor. Former Secretary of Geelong Trades Hall Council (GTHC) Tim Gooden also gave a toast to Green Left Weekly.

Green Left Weekly asked Myers and McGregor, as well as current GTHC secretary Colin Vernon, why it is important to celebrate May Day.

Palestinians in Gaza have defied deadly Israeli repression to continue their Great March of Return protests into their sixth week, writes Lisa Gleeson.

Protracted restrictions on the human rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association are incompatible with the conduct of a credible electoral process in Turkey, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said on May 9.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in a May 8 speech: “If one day our nation says tamam (enough), only then will we step aside.” In response, millions of people posted tweets featuring the word “tamam”.

There were more than 1.8 million posts including the word “tamam”, while different versions/spellings of the word were also popular. The hashtag #devam (“continue”) started by pro-Erdoğan groups immediately after lagged behind at 300,000 posts.

[Abridged from ANF News.]

The leader of the mass protest movement that brought down Armenia’s right-wing government has been elected by parliament as the new prime minister. Hovhannes Gevorkian looks at how this happened — and what the near future might hold.

The federal government reached an agreement with the Labor opposition to pass amendments to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) on May 8, effectively ensuring less water will flow to the environment in the southern basin.

The deal sidelined negotiations with cross-bench Senators and scuttled a move by the Greens to request a disallowance motion for the vote because of environmental concerns.

Just a week before Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA) held their annual Council elections on April 26 and 27, the out-going co-presidents Mariam Mohammed and Kiriti Mortha called on Sydney University management to investigate the "governance structure" of SUPRA, alleging there was a "toxic" culture on the council.

A new round of United States sanctions against Venezuela, this time directed against three individuals and their businesses, was rebuffed on May 7 by Samuel Moncada, the Bolivarian Republic’s Vice Minister for Foreign Relations.

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