Poland: Shipyard workers strike
At the Gdansk shipyard in Warsaw, workers called a two-day strike June 12 to protest government plans to close the facilities. They demanded back wages and called on the government to find a way to keep the yard open. The closing would put 7,300 employees out of work. The government is trying to begin bankruptcy proceedings as the yard's debt is estimated at $140 million. Gdansk, which is 60 percent owned by the government and 40 percent owned by the workers, is the birthplace of the trade union Solidarity, which emerged as workers rose up against the bureaucratic Stalinist government in the 1980s. Former Polish president Lech Walesa, who led the worker's revolt at Gdansk, returned there recently, ostensibly to go back to work or force the new regime to give him a pension.

Caterpillar invests in N. Ireland
Caterpillar Inc. of Peoria, Illinois, and Emerson Electric Corp. of St. Louis, Missouri, announced June 12 a $175 million investment to establish three new factories in Northern Ireland. Two of the new plants will open in predominantly Protestant neighborhoods, while the third, and by far the smallest, will be located in a Catholic area. At the beginning of June, a subsidiary of Emerson Electric, Copeland Corp., announced it will open a compressors manufacturing factory in Cookstown, a mixed Protestant-Catholic town. Male unemployment in these areas ranges between 40 and 80 percent. Some 11 percent of the workforce are unemployed in N. Ireland.

Ireland pro-divorce vote stands
On June 12, the Supreme Court in Ireland rejected overturning a referendum that ended the ban on divorce, which was approved last November by a 9,000-vote margin. The high court unanimously rejected a challenge by former senator Des Hanafin, leader of the anti-divorce campaign. The government, which supported the ending of the ban, announced it will introduce legislation this summer to make divorce available.

AIDS deaths may be 1.1 million
According to an United Nations report released June 6, AIDS- related deaths are likely to reach 1.1 million this year. The report said there are 21 million adults infected with the HIV virus around the world, and the number of people with AIDS symptoms rose 25 percent last year. Ninety percent of those infected live in semicolonial countries where sanitary and medical conditions are at low levels, with 13.3 million people in sub-Saharan Africa alone. These are the same countries that have recently suffered widespread outbreaks of preventable diseases, including meningitis, cholera, tuberculosis, and malaria.

U.S. gov't seeks Iran sanctions
The House Way and Means Committee approved a bill June 13 calling for U.S. retaliation against foreign companies that invest in Iran's oil industry. The measure, which is backed by Congress and the Clinton administration, would mandate the president to impose sanctions against any foreign company investing $40 million or more in Iranian oil and gas development. Last year, president William Clinton barred U.S. companies from doing business with Iran, and has said he will sign this bill. One provision of the bill subjects foreign companies that invest in Iran to a range of U.S. sanctions, including exclusion of their products from the U.S. market.

The bill also seeks to stifle investments in Libya by imposing similar penalties on foreign companies doing business in that country. Many capitalist governments have already embraced the economic embargo against Libya, imposed by the United Nations Security Council allegedly to punish the government there for the bombing of a Pan Am flight.

UN barred from sites in Iraq United Nations inspectors have been barred recently from entering certain Iraqi offices and buildings of ministries and security organizations. The UN team, set up after the 1991 U.S.- led war against the Iraqi people, was organized to search for banned chemical, nuclear and biological weapons and long-range missiles. Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz said a UN Security Council team of diplomats could visit, but without military experts.

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright called Iraq's offer "ridiculous" and said that "blocking ... inspectors from an entire category of suspect sites ... is a matter of grave concern to my government." Chief UN weapons inspector Rolf Ekeus said that "Iraq has decided to raise the issue higher up than ever before." The UN Security Council approved a resolution demanding "immediate, unconditional and unrestricted access to any and all areas, facilities, equipment, records and means of transportation which they wished to inspect."

Cops chase immigrants
A van with more than 20 undocumented immigrant workers skidded off a highway near San Diego June 12, slamming into a gas station. One man died and twelve others were treated at hospitals. Just minutes earlier, U.S. Border Patrol agents had tried to stop the vehicle. After the crash, police arrested seven uninjured passengers of the van.

Rightist group surrenders to FBI
The rightist group Freemen surrendered to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents on June 13, ending the 81-day standoff at an isolated ranch in Montana. Earlier in the day the Freemen took down their upside-down American flag and substituted it with a Confederate battle flag. Members of the group face an array of state and federal charges, ranging from financial fraud to threatening public officials. The FBI negotiated the surrender after bringing in armored vehicles and shutting off electricity from the ranch the group had occupied for months.

Racist baseball owner forced to retire for two seasons
Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinnati Reds, has agreed to give up control of the baseball team for two seasons. The decision came after an outcry from various groups over Schott's racist and anti-Semitic comments and her remarks that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was good in the beginning. The Major League Baseball executive council had given her an ultimatum to step down voluntarily or be suspended. Schott, who still owns the team, will not be involved in the day-to-day decisions of the club. Schott was previously suspended in 1993 for commonly using "coarse language that is racially and ethnically insensitive." The commission found at that time that she frequently used terms such as "dumb, lazy nigger," and "Jew bastards and dirty Jews."

Internet censorship halted
In a unanimous decision on June 12, a three-judge federal panel in Philadelphia declared unconstitutional key parts of new legislation intended to censor "indecent" material on Internet, blocking enforcement of the law. The ruling called government attempts to regulate the Internet's content, "profoundly repugnant," and an affront to the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. It then granted a temporary restraining order that prohibits the Justice Department from enforcing, or even investigating, violations of the Communications Decency Act's ban on what it deems indecent and offensive speech on the Internet, the global computer network. The bill was approved overwhelmingly by Congress this year.

Radiation lawsuits dismissed
On June 10, a U.S. federal judge dismissed 2,100 cases filed by people who suffer from radioactive injuries from the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. The cases varied from leukemia to other cancers among the plaintiffs. In January and April of this year, U.S. district court judge Sylvia Rambo excluded most of the plaintiff's witnesses in the case because they were considered "scientifically unreliable." Ten cases were due to be heard this month. But the judge in the case threw out these suits, and the remaining 2,000, saying the cases would be "an exercise in futility and a waste of valuable resources."

- MEGAN ARNEY  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home