Zimbabwe's trade union leaders called a two-day stayaway for this week in protest at president Robert Mugabe’s latest assault.
Niger Some 2,500 people marched through the streets of Niger’s capital, Niamey, last week to demand that the government does more to relieve the food crisis.
Four weeks of strikes, protests and blockades have thrown the South American state of Bolivia into turmoil, and forced president Carlos Mesa to offer his resignation.
The Bolivian rebellion is the latest uprising to hit the region. The Latin American version of "regime change" is proving a major headache for the US, the multinationals keen to exploit the region’s resources and their allies in the region’s ruling classes.
Over 1,000 Egyptian campaigners have defied police terror to protest at state backed violence against democracy activists.
Following a disastrous defeat for the governing SPD, the equivalent of Britain’s Labour Party, in its North Rhine and Westphalia heartland, it has called for early elections in a desperate move to ward off rebellion in its ranks.
The SPD won only 37.1 percent of the votes in North Rhine and Westphalia, down 5.7 points since the last state election five years ago.
The SPD’s crisis has been sharpened by resistance to Schröder’s policies.
Laura Bush, wife of the US president, visited Egypt last week to shower praise on the country’s regime. She described Egypt’s dictator, Hosni Mubarak, as "bold and wise", claiming that he was "taking the first step" towards democracy.
The first round of voting in Lebanon’s elections has exposed the reality behind the "new dawn for democracy" in the Middle East.
Egyptian police and ruling party thugs turned 25 May, the day of the "historic referendum", into a public show of power and violence.
A massive strike by telecom workers in Pakistan is threatening to derail the government’s privatisation programme which would cut up to 4.2 million phone lines. Over the last two weeks over 55,000 workers at the Pakistan Telecom Company Limited (PTCL) have been involved in strike action. The government’s first response was to postpone the privatisation in the hope of demobilising the workers, and then to announce that privatisation was back on. At the time of writing, the unions had just announced the resumption of the strike.
