The Papua New Guinean government has backed down in the face of a society-wide revolt over its new power to suspend judges. Prime Minister Peter O'Neill said the law would not be implemented until public consultations were carried out.
Thousands of students from the University of PNG rallied in Port Moresby on March 23. Students said in a statement that the law undermines the constitution by removing the separation between the government and courts.
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Scientists using historical satellite data have found that ice cover on the Great Lakes, a collection of freshwater lakes in north-east North America around the Canada-United States border, was reduced by 71% between 1973 and 2010.
The study, published in the Journal of Climate last month, found a substantial downward ice cover trend in all five Great Lakes and the associated Lake St Clair.
Mohamed Ibrahim Nugud, secretary general of the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP), died on March 22 in London, where he was undergoing medical treatment for an inoperable brain tumour.
Thousands of people joined the funeral procession to farewell Nugud on March 25. His body was taken from the airport past his home and the SCP headquarters before being buried in the Al Farouq cemetery. Leaders of other opposition parties and representatives from South Sudan attended.
The murder of Trayvon Martin in a gated community in Florida has dramatised the depths of racism in United States society. Martin was young, Black and male — that was enough for neighbourhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman to decide he was "suspicious", to stalk him and eventually to pull the trigger.
African American families understand that Martin's fate could happen to their own children. That's why so many young Black men remember the time they had "the talk" — when family or friends tried to prepare them for dealing with racism in general and the police in particular.
Since the global economic crisis broke out in 2008, the many-sided protest movement against neoliberal austerity has yet to gain enough strength to force any real retreats from governments doing the bidding of capitalism’s ruling elites.
The killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a self-appointed "neighborhood watch captain" has provoked anguish, rage and now, at long last, resistance.
We've seen rallies, demonstrations and walkouts at dozens upon dozens of high schools in Florida alone.
Even more remarkably, this resistance has found expression in the world of sports. An impressive group of NBA players, from Carmelo Anthony to Steve Nash to the leaders of the NBA Players Association, have spoken out and called for justice.
In what has been described as New Zealand's most high-profile and bitter industrial dispute since the early 1990s, waterside workers went back to work, after a four-week strike. Auckland's port company agreed to end its lockout of 235 workers on March 30, and pay workers a week's wages for being illegally locked out.
The New Zealand Herald reported that Maritime Union president Garry Parsloe told a huge workers' meeting: “You'll all go back to your jobs and until you go back you'll all get paid.
“Everything we have done has fallen into place, thanks to your solidarity.”
George Galloway, running for the anti-war and anti-austerity Respect party, won a sensational victory in the Bradford West by-election on March 29.
The scale of Galloway's win, turning a safe Labour seat into a 10,000 vote majority, is without precedent in modern British politics. All those who oppose austerity and war should be walking a little taller.
Galloway and Respect fought a campaign on two simple premises: opposition to wars abroad and opposition to austerity at home.
A huge rally was held at Paris's Bastille monument in support of Left Front presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon on March 18, the Morning Star said the next day.
More than 100,000 trade unionists, members of the French Communist Party (PCF) and disaffected former members of the Socialist Party (PS) marched under red balloons and flags.
Melenchon said: "We're going to make this election on April 22 a civic insurrection.
"The insurrection is ... the most indispensable of duties in this France disfigured by social, territorial, cultural and gender inequality."
This article first appeared in Tracker magazine on March 19.
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Aboriginal leaders in the Northern Territory have issued a strong warning that the Australian government’s new land grab in the form of the proposed 10-year extension of the intervention will send many communities into a dangerous downward spiral with still more death and misery.
A new report by an international research body has called for detention of refugee children to be outlawed and for all countries to “ensure the rights and liberty” of children affected by immigration detention.
Australian immigration detention figures released on March 25 showed that even after the federal government “completes” transferring children to “community detention”, hundreds of underage asylum seekers will stay in immigration detention centres.
When you are the Only Democracy in the Middle EastTM you don’t need to worry about petty little things such as human rights. And so ABC Online reported on March 27 that Israel has severed all ties with the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
The final outrage that forced Israel to cut ties was a UNHRC vote in favour of investigating whether illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank were, in fact, infringing the rights of Palestinians.
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