Europe

Voluntary moratoriums on nuclear weapon tests are not enough. Member states that have not yet ratified the United Nations-backed Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) should therefore urgently do so.

UK commuters face an 8 to13% increase in rail fares, well above the rate of inflation, whilst Stagecoach, one of the private rail companies, announces a return of £340m in profits to shareholders – including an £88m payment to two chief executives. Meanwhile the inevitable austerity driven “double dip recession” looms across major economies but the banks refuse to lend.

Population growth and water stress are driving Earth to a food and environmental crunch that only better farming techniques and smarter use of the ecosystem will avert, a UN report issued on Monday said.

The European Revolution news portal has published a summary of what’s been taking place in Spain for the last three months where people haven’t been so mobilized for generations. “Yet what is certain is that new and powerful social movement has been born here in Spain and it will continue.”

A young Algerian, Sid Hamed Bouzaine has been released from an immigration detention centre near Malaga. After even being made to marry his girlfriend of 2 years, Spanish Authorities have seemingly bowed to public pressure and accepted his claim to stay in the country given that reportedly three of his brothers have been killed by the state and the other one has disappeared.

This is what different French public figures and some of the organisations principally committed to defending the gypsies have announced. Since last summer, the French Government of Nicolas Sarkozy has continued to apply all kinds of pressures so that the Romanian and Bulgarian gypsies, Community citizens, leave France for good.

Protesters prepared to take to Madrid’s streets Wednesday to decry the cost of a rock festival-style, million-strong youth party for Pope Benedict XVI in the midst of an economic crisis. On the eve of the 84-year-old pontiff’s arrival in the Spanish capital to celebrate lavish World Youth Day events, more than 100 groups opposed to the visit are protesting.

Whilst the blame game about the UK riots rages in the national and international Media and the State uses the opportunity to get more draconian, punitive and discriminatory, we must keep an eye on the structural changes that the neoliberal agenda is introducing, even as we speak about those changes being the root of the problem.

On Sunday the ‘Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity’ carried out ​​a silent march against Mexico’s militarization movement to fight organized crime. The demonstration was led by poet Javier Sicilia. Around 3000 people joined the demonstration. The protest took place in downtown Mexico City and ended in the federal district in front of the Mexican Senate.

Expensive studies prepared by prestigious organisations come now to say that the “physical” trading in human beings is the third most profitable “illicit” business after drug and arms trafficking.