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Fight back against
Fresh from his military victory, Tony Blair is out to target what Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher, in so many ways his role model, called 'the enemy within' - militant trade unionism.
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By Faz Velmi
Amina Lawal, a Nigerian woman sentenced to death by stoning for 'adultery', must wait until June to hear her fate. Her appeal hearing against her sentence was due in late March but was adjourned when only three of the five required tribunal members were available. There are suggestions that the trial was deliberately delayed until after Nigeria's elections -recently concluded-took place.
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On 15 March, 21 defendants in the latest round of the Queen Boat trials in Egypt were sentenced to three years' imprisonment for "debauchery". The affair began when 55 men were arrested on the Queen Boat, a gay disco, in May 2001.
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By Patrick Murphy
Attempts to revive the peace process in Northern Ireland (NI) have stalled. After George Bush's visit to Belfast during the Iraq war, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern expected to be able to announce the reopening of the NI Executive. Elections are due in May and the two governments don't want to postpone them.
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By Dan Katz
Israeli finance minister Meir Sheetrit has announced that a long-awaited government austerity plan will be voted on in the Knesset (parliament) on Wednesday 30 April. The plan will mean an 8% public sector pay cut and thousands of jobs losses.
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There is a strong case for dismissing the charges made by the Tory Daily Telegraph and others against George Galloway, of having been a bought and paid-for agent of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq -
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29 May-1 June in the Assembly Rooms,
George Street, Edinburgh
Talks: George Monbiot on "A Manifesto for a New World Order"; Paul Kingsnorth and Mark Curtis on Global Capitalism; Milan Rai and Geoff Simons on Iraq after the war; and Joe Baxter of No Sweat and Gregor Gall on Workers' Struggles and Trade Unions.
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The China Labour Bulletin is campaigning for improved health and safety laws to protect thousands of Chinese workers injured and killed every year.
Last year there were an estimated 110,000 deaths from industrial accidents in China and nearly 14,000 accidents in the manufacturing and mining industries alone. Over half the people in the world with pneumoconiosis (a lung disease associated with dust and silica dust) live in China. In an official survey, over 15% of all workers interviewed were believed to be suffering from some form of occupational disease.
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Xiao Yunliang and Yao Fuxin, workers' leaders from Liaoyang in north east China were tried on 15 January 2003 on charges including subversion and the organising of illegal demonstrations. No verdict has yet been announced and the workers' leaders have remained in post-trial detention for over three months. This contravenes even Chinese law - a system not known for its liberality - on the time limit for announcement of verdict in a criminal trial.
