June 10, 2006

Moving to break the stalemate over Iran’s nuclear program, European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana met in Tehran June 6 with top Iranian officials to present new proposals agreed on last week by the U.S., Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany. The proposals are contingent on Iran’s willingness to suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing — activities that are legal for peaceful nuclear power under the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In early February, a week after Evo Morales was sworn in as Bolivia’s president, Cuban doctors arrived in the country to care for survivors of devastating floods. Seven hundred Cuban medical professionals are still there. They’ve cared for 500,000 Bolivians and set up 20 fully equipped hospitals. They work in 180 municipalities and nine provinces.

Former Peruvian President Alan Garcia, whose 1985-90 term left his country in economic ruin, won a runoff election against left-of-center former army officer Ollanta Humala, preliminary results showed June 6.

UNITED NATIONS — Twenty-five years after AIDS was first detected, in Los Angeles, and five years after the UN General Assembly adopted the “Declaration on Commitment on HIV/AIDS,” heads of state, ambassadors, representatives of nongovernmental organizations and people infected with HIV met here to review what progress has been made in the battle against a scourge that has killed millions.

Worldwide: Tropical forests at risk
United Kingdom: University teachers say no to Israeli ‘apartheid’
East Timor: Violence disrupts city
Brazil: International peace meeting
Kenya: Environmental problems ‘systemic’

Labor’s potential strength is mighty, greater than any other social force on earth, because of what workers produce worldwide and because labor represents the interests of the overwhelming majority of humanity. The current attacks on labor are driven by capitalism’s deepening contradictions, its growing weakness, not strength.

ORLANDO, Fla. (PAI) — Re-uniting the U.S. labor movement after last year’s AFL-CIO-Change to Win split is critical to “ending the madness” of the GOP government of George W. Bush, declared Coalition of Black Trade Unionists President William Lucy at CBTU’s May 25 annual convention here. Lucy blasted the Bush administration for everything from the racism shown in responding to Hurricane Katrina to the deaths in the Iraq war.

A study by Harvard Medical School researchers in the July 2006 issue of the American Journal of Public Health finds that U.S. residents are less healthy than Canadians.

The problem of Darfur is a political one. It is part of Sudan’s overall political crisis. It will never be properly tackled except in the framework of a comprehensive political solution to the problems of the country.