World

As a result of the May 13 elections, Silvio Berlusconi's right-wing La Casa delle Liberta ("House of Freedom") coalition will hold 177 seats in the 315-member upper house and 368 seats in the 630-member lower house of Italy's

JAKARTA — If opponents of President Abdurrahman Wahid have their way, when it meets on May 30 the Indonesian parliament will call a special session of the People's Consultative Assembly, the only body which has the power to impeach

Failing to coopt the activists who were planning to protest at its Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) in Barcelona on June 25-27, the World Bank announced on May 19 that the meeting has been called off.

LAHORE — A 250-strong demonstration at the Lahore Press Club has supported a boycott by social and political organisations here of World Bank consultations for a new "Country Assistance Strategy". Representatives of the Joint

Eight protesters who took part in the April 20-22 protests in Quebec City against the US-led plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas have been sentenced to up to nine months imprisonment. Stephane Paquet, based in Quebec City, was

Since it called off its truce in late 1999, the Basque armed independence organisation ETA (Basque Homeland and Freedom) has carried out a spate of bombings and assassinations across Spain. These have aroused such disgust among

Some media commentators have ridiculed the fact that the Scottish Socialist Party doesn't expect to win any seats in the UK general election on June 7. The unfairly high deposit of &#163500 combined with the "first past the post"

Israel's use of F16 jets against Palestinian civilians on May 18 departed from all military norms of the previous 33 years of occupation [of the West Bank and Gaza Strip]. This extreme step shows an imbalance of judgement. When a nation-state uses

One of the corporations which had a direct part in drawing up George W Bush's new energy policy was Houston-based corporate giant Enron, a US$100 billion empire which trades energy in every corner of the world. Enron and its chief

RAMALLAH — As the Palestinian uprising (intifada) enters its eighth month the gap between the Palestinian population and the interests of the Israeli government has never been wider. The systematic policy of state-sponsored

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA — "For immigrants to build a better future, they need to build a union", says Eliseo Medina, a Mexican immigrant from Zacatecas who became a leading organiser for the United Farm Workers, and now serves as

The United States government suffered a humiliating defeat on May 4 when it was voted off the United Nations Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission's inception. It's not as if Washington didn't do its