World

  • ZIMBABWE: Mugabe comes in from the cold?

    Brian Stephens, Harare Having demobilised the once vibrant mass movement that had previously threatened his rule, and neutered the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's ruling party — the Zimbabwe

  • CHINA: Sweeping privatisations spark criticism

    Eva Cheng Widespread public disgust at the sweeping privatisation process pushed by the Chinese government since 1997 has begun to surface in the Chinese mass media. Last August, Taiwan-born, US-educated and Hong Kong-based academic Larry Lang

  • UNITED STATES: Taco Bell farmers win

    On March 8, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers called off its four year boycott of Taco Bell, after the fast-food giant agreed to pay a penny-per-pound surcharge for its tomatoes, the money to go to the indigent immigrant pickers who make up the CIW.

  • PNG: Uni staff demand VC resign

    More than 300 staff of the University of Papua New Guinea have been on strike since March 7 on strike demanding the resignation of the vice-chancellor and three other senior management officials. The university's two staff associations claim that the

  • VENEZUELA: Bush's next oil war?

    Stuart Munckton A statement released on March 8 and signed by almost 400 Venezuelan journalists accused the US government and media of a campaign to prepare the ground for a US military attack on oil-rich Venezuela. According to translation of

  • IRAQ: The right to resist

    Rohan Pearce "When are the Iraqis going to fight for their own country? ... We want to know when the Iraqis are going to go out there and shed their blood, as American service men ... are willing to shed theirs", a plaintive Democrat Senator Edward

  • BRITAIN: Home Office to ease police race recruitment targets

    On March 8, the Home Office announced it was considering making targets for ethnic minority police officers apply only to new recruits, not to the service as a whole, in order to make them "more achievable". The announcement came on the eve of the

  • SOMALIA: EU toxic dumping a post-tsunami disaster

    In a March 5 press conference, Somali MP Awad Ahmed Ashra explained that the Boxing Day tsunami had "thrown out containers containing toxic waste" on the country's coastline, causing widespread illness including skin disorders and abdominal

  • BRITAIN: Protesters shut Coke for 5 hours

    On March 4, an international day of protest against Coca-Cola's human rights abuses in Colombia, human rights campaigners blockaded the company's Bristol distribution centre for five hours, preventing 30 lorries from entering or leaving the site. The

  • BRITAIN: Asylum seeker attempts suicide

    On March 9, a Zimbabwean asylum seeker jumped out the window of her fourth floor flat when she found out that the government intended to deport her. The Home Office resumed deporting failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe in November, despite a UN

  • UNITED STATES: Immigrants given monitoring bracelets

    National Public Radio in the US reported on March 2 that 1700 immigrants had been given electronic monitoring bracelets by the Department Of Homeland Security, in a six-month experimental trial. The immigrants have not been accused of a crime, but

  • IRAQ: US used chemical weapons in Fallujah assault

    Doug Lorimer The US military used internationally banned chemical weapons, including nerve gas, during their assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah last November, Dr Khalid ash Shaykhli, an Iraqi health ministry official, told a March 3 Baghdad