News from around the world

Brazilian cities went into partial shutdown on Friday 28 April as the country observed its first general strike in more than two decades.

Over 200 scholars from local and overseas universities have signed a joint statement criticising the prosecution of Hong Kong activists for their leadership role in the 2014 pro-democracy Occupy protests.

“We are alarmed and outraged,” the statement read. “We strongly oppose the Hong Kong government’s decision to charge these scholars and activists for their non-violent fight to realize Hong Kong people’s right to universal suffrage.”

The IIRE is raising funds for the English translation of Livio Maitan’s Per una storia della IV internazionale: la testimonianza di un comunista controcorrente. In this book, Livio Maitan (1923-2004) relates his experience of being a revolutionary communist during the second half of the 20th Century. Written by a leading member of the Fourth International and lifelong Marxist, the book is both testimony and an analysis of a 50-year period of great turmoil in Italian and international politics.

The shooting last night where a man attacked a police car killing an officer, while wounding another and a tourist, before being shot dead, took place right at the end of the Presidential campaign. It is a human drama which today plunges families into mourning. But most of the candidates have used this to raise all kinds of fears by characterizing this as an act of war, of Islamist barbarism.

Zuma’s cabinet reshuffle, which removed the finance ministers Gordhan and Jonas, amongst others, opens the door to the looting of the state on an unprecedented scale. At the heart of this is a very crude act to get control of the Treasury on behalf of a predatory elite, hiding behind the ANC-provided mask of black economic empowerment.

Awami Workers Party GB leader and Federal Committee member Baba Jan, who is serving life term in jail appeared in a lower court in Hunza on Wednesday March 8.

In the final statement by the constitutional council on Saturday 18 March, 11 candidates for the first round of the French presidential elections were validated. The efforts of the NPA to get more than 500 signatures in a vigorous campaign for the democratic right to stand met with success obtaining 523 sponsorships form local mayors and regional councillors, as well as 50 sent spontaneously to the Council.

The fund drive launched for International Viewpoint on 20 February 1.6 million reasons to help IV raise £1,600 is off to a flying start thanks to some generous contributions from readers.

Daniel Bensaïd (1946-2010) was one of the most innovative contemporary Marxists, a leading figure of May ’68, and an influential French public intellectual. Bensaïd wrote and lectured widely on burning issues of theory, strategy, history and philosophy in a number of works such as Marx for Our Times, Strategies of Resistance, and a moving autobiography - An Impatient Life: A Political Memoir.

North Cairo Elementary Court decided on 11 January 2017, to freeze the assets of feminist and woman human rights defender Mozn Hassan, Founder and Executive Director of “Nazra for Feminist Studies”, freeze the assets of “Nazra for Studies” Company, and to freeze the assets of “Nazra for Feminist Studies”.