The United States media remain enthralled by Congress鈥檚 partisan battles over the national debt ceiling, while the assault on public sector workers across the US intensifies.
On June 14, Wisconsin鈥檚 state supreme court overturned an earlier legal challenge to the state鈥檚 anti-union 鈥渂udget-repair鈥 bill. The bill will ban collective bargaining for most of the state鈥檚 public sector workers.
The bill sparked sustained mass protests in Wisconsin in February and March, including the occupation of the Capitol building in Madison.
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WikiLeaks released the statement below on June 16 to mark six months since its editor-in-chief Julian Assange was placed under house arrest in Britain.
Soccer is the great global game: the closest thing we have to a connective cultural tissue that binds our species across national and cultural borders.
But only in a world so upside down could 鈥渢he Beautiful Game鈥 be run by an organisation as corrupt as FIFA and by a man as rotten to the core as FIFA President Sepp Blatter.
Only Blatter, whose reputation for degeneracy approaches legend, would hire a war criminal such as former United States secretary of state Henry Kissinger to head 鈥渁 committee of wise persons鈥 aimed at 鈥渞ooting out corruption鈥 in his organisation.
Marcel Khalife, born in 1950 in Amchit, Lebanon, has injected new life into the music produced by the oud (the Arabic lute) 鈥 helping revive an important part of Arabic culture. Khalife studied the oud at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music and graduated in 1971. From 1972 to 1975, Khalife taught at the Beirut National Conservatory of Music, public universities and local private music institutions. During that period, he toured the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and the United States giving solo performances on the oud.
More than 65,000 people in cities and towns all over Japan marched on June 11 to mark three months since Fukushima nuclear disaster. Marchers called for an end to nuclear power.
In Tokyo, separate marches took off from different routes through the city before assembling in front of Shinjuku station.
The largest action, a 鈥渟ound-demo鈥 called by the Shiroto no Ran (鈥淎mateur Riot鈥) network attracted thousands of young people. They marched through the city accompanied by sound-trucks plying a variety of musical styles, from punk to folk to techno.
They鈥檙e a part of the human race
Searching for a safe place
To rise from their despair
To聽be part of the world that seems fair
Without wars
Famines
Or destruction
That stops all means of production
So they begin to flee
Unwilling to live amongst the聽debris
Where they lost friends
Without any warnings
Where they lost family
Indefinitely鈥
When they arrive
Freedom is limited in order to survive
Due to a lack of understanding
With the government demanding
Brief medical attention
A lack of food and mental exhaustion
A place we like to call mandatory detention
More than 3000 riot police were sent to the Yoosung piston head factory in Asan on May 24 to break up a factory occupation and sit in protest over a company lockout.
Yoosung is a manufacturing company that has a near monopoly over the production of piston rings with an 80% share of the domestic market. It is a major supplier for Kia and Hyundai motors.
US: Activists arrested for feeding homeless
鈥淥rlando [Florida] police arrested five more activists from behind a makeshift buffet table at聽 Lake Eola Park聽 on Wednesday evening, bringing to a dozen the number charged in the past week with violating city restrictions on feeding the homeless.
With Italy being the latest European country to reject nuclear power in a June 12-13 referendum, a coalition of anti-nuclear groups in Britain has announced plans to hold a mass non-violent blockade of Hinkley Point nuclear power station on October 3.
The plant, near Bridgwater in Somerset, is expected to be the site of the first new nuclear power station.
Hundreds of campaigners are expected to take part in Gandhi-style civil disobedience, risking arrest by blockading the access road to the site in protest over the threat posed by nuclear power.
US officials in Haiti warned that the Haitian government would be unable to handle a catastrophic earthquake five years before a devastating tremor ended up destroying large swathes of the Haitian capital and surrounding towns, killing tens of thousands and destroying hundreds of buildings.
The information was revealed in a secret US cable obtained by the media organisation WikiLeaks.
Trade union leaders have rejected government claims that human rights and trade unionist protection has improved. The rejection denigrates symbolic gestures aimed at securing a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States. The trade union leaders say the FTA will help multinational companies over Colombian workers.
Tens of thousands of striking trade unionists and their allies flooded Syntagma Square outside parliament on June 15 to try to stop MPs from approving the latest bill imposing more cuts and privatisations, the MorningStarOnline.co.uk said the next day.
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