**Sergio Mattarella with Carlo Cottarelli | 28 May 2018 | Presidenza della Repubblica | Italy
Just imagine that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party won a general election in Britain on a program of spending £100bn-plus in order to stimulate the economy after years of government cutbacks and under-investment.
Corbyn, wearing his very best suit, went to Buckingham Palace to meet the Queen, but Her Majesty, after having the PM-elect served with tea and biscuits, informed him that she would not accept his proposed chancellor of the exchequer, John McDonnell, and instead put forward alternative names.
30 May 2018 — Authorities in Mexico are being urged to act to end what the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has described as “a wave of enforced disappearances”in the city of Nuevo Laredo, amid “strong indications” that federal security forces may be involved.
UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré | High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein.
A local human rights organization in the city, which is located near the border with Texas, in the United States, estimates there have been at least 40 disappearances from February of this year through to mid-May.
Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Office in Mexico has documented the disappearance of 21 men and two women during the same period.
“Many of these people are reported to have been arbitrarily detained and disappeared while going about their daily lives.
Spreading the message that tobacco causes deadly illnesses such as heart disease and stroke helps prevent “needless” loss of life, United Nations health experts on 30 May 2018 said.
WHO China Office | The National Stadium of China in Beijing was lit up with a no-tobacco message: Tobacco Free Beijing.
Coinciding with World No Tobacco Day 2018, observed each 31 May, the World Health Organization(WHO) is warning that tobacco use and exposure to second hand smoke are “major causes” of cardiovascular disease, contributing to three million deaths a year.
WE ALL know the picture from the books and the movies: a gambler sits at the roulette table in a casino. He has luck. A lot of luck.
Uri Avnery
In front of the gambler the pile of chips is growing. Higher and higher. Every spin of the roulette wheel adds to the heap.
When the heap reaches the level of his eyes, he could just get up, exchange the chips for money and go home.
He winnings are enough to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life.
But the man cannot get up. Just cannot. He is glued to his place at the roulette table. And then his luck abandons him. The heap of chips starts to shrink.
30 May 2018 (Wall Street International)*— When Americans who shout, “I want my country back,” to what country and what era are they referring? If they mean the United States of 50 years ago, they wish a return to American Apartheid, the Jim Crow Era.
29 May 2018 (openDemocracy)* — The foundations of Israel are rooted in a colonial project that has modernized its face but continues to subject Palestinians to military occupation, land dispossession and unequal rights.
Saint Mary’s Church, in the destroyed Palestinian village of Iqrit. Photo: Daniel Avelar
On a hilltop in northern Galilee, a small church stands alone surrounded by rubbles. It is the last remaining building of the Palestinian village of Iqrit, which was depopulated and destroyed following the foundation of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948.
(Greenpeace)* — The Amur region in Russia is often reported as a region in flames, but this year is one of the worst. After a winter with very little snow, strong winds are spreading the fires even faster. Vast areas that used to be forests a few decades ago, are now burning wastelands.
International Labour Conference addresses a range of issues, including workplace violence, women at work, social dialogue, application of standards and development cooperation.
GENEVA, 28 May 2018 (ILO)* – The Director-General of the International Labour Organization, Guy Ryder, warned of ‘heightened tension in the world’ as he addressed the opening of the 107th session of the International Labour Conference (ILC).
29 May 2018 — A former governor of the Bank of Spain told EURACTIV that Luis de Guindos has the right CV to become vice-president of the ECB, a post he will take up later this week. But the ex-minister’s “brutally wrong” decisions led the country to the “disaster” of the bailout, he added.
**Photo: Span’s former Minister of Economy Luis de Guindos | World Economic Forum | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Miguel Ángel Fernández Ordóñez, a socialist politician who headed the Bank of Spain between 2006 and 2012, is keen to remind that the construction bubble was already fuelling when he took over as governor, a post he left before the end of his mandate because of disputes with de Guindos, who hails from the rival centre-right party, the Partido Popular (PP).
“He was brutally wrong the first six months, he led us to disaster,” he told EURACTIV in an interview. “The markets were closed to us. That never happened in the history of Spain, since 1959,” he remarked.
28 May 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service — On May 10, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia informed the UN Security Council and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres that Saudi Air Defenses intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles launched from inside Yemeni territory targeting densely populated civilian areas in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Cartoon: S. Reynolds CC BY-SA 4.0
No one was killed, but an earlier attack, on March 26, 2018, killed one Egyptian worker in Riyadh and an April 28 attack killed a Saudi man.
Unlike the unnumbered victims of the Saudis’ own ongoing bombardment of Yemen, these two precious, irreplaceable lives are easy to document and count.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 