Garment factory bosses in Bangladesh have been forced to hand out sacks of subsidised rice to workers in response to a growing strike wave in protest at rising food prices.
Storms in Burma had killed tens of thousands, with many thousands more still missing, as Socialist Worker went to press.
The government of Hosni Mubarak announced last week that all Egyptian public sector workers would receive a 30 percent wage increase as part of an effort to head off growing militancy. Egyptians who work in the informal sector are not included in the rise.
Bolivia is at a crossroads once again. A referendum last weekend on increased autonomy for the country’s largest state had one clear purpose – to undermine the democratically elected government of Evo Morales.
The US election is scheduled for 4 November. While it is still not decided whether the Democratic Party candidate will be Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, John McCain was declared to be the Republican candidate early on in the race.
The repression at Mahalla al-Kubra's textile mills in Egypt has not dampened the wave of protests and strikes.
The US "war on terror" strategy has come so badly unstuck in Pakistan since president Pervez Musharraf was humiliated in February’s election that leading politicians are being forced to push a new conciliatory tone.
The election of Fernando Lugo last weekend as president of Paraguay has shaken the country’s elite and unseated the longest ruling party in the world.
The victory of the Maoist communists in Nepal, who won almost half of the seats in last week’s constituent assembly elections and are now set to form a government, has rocked the country.
Bangladesh stands on the brink of a major social explosion. Huge rises in the price of basic food stuffs means that hunger is stalking the poor – leading to the violent repression of strikes on the one hand, and suicides among those who have lost all hope on the other.
The Egyptian regime has unleashed a wave of repression on the industrial city of Mahalla el-Kubra following four days of riots and demonstrations.
US journalist James Buck witnessed the crackdown in Mahalla following the uprising.
