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SCOTLAND Socialists ready to shock the establishment BY FRANCIS CURRAN  With less than one year until the Scottish Parliament elections, due in May 2003, the Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) faces its biggest challenge yet.
BY SARAH STEPHEN The European Union faces an ironic contradiction in coming decades. As birth rates continue to decline, many countries face negative population growth. The EU needs more immigration. Yet the European Council's June 21-22 meeting in
CMG workers return to work BY TERRICA STRUDWICK ROCKHAMPTON — Meatworkers at the Packer-family-owned Consolidated Meat Group's Lakes Creek abbatoir returned to work on June 20 after spending two weeks on strike and another week locked
Afghan refugee pleads: Don't send us back! NOORIA WAZIFADOST is a 16-year-old Afghan refugee now living in Sydney. She arrived in Darwin with her family in 2000, and spent 40 days in the Curtin detention centre before being released on
SOUTH AFRICA: Sacrificing AIDS victims for corporate profits BY PATRICK BOND  JOHANNESBURG — During the last few days of June, at the same time as the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and Congress of South African Trade Unions
BY PIP HINMAN& SARAH STEPHEN On June 23, the same day that 13,000 people took to the streets across Australia to oppose the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, detainees at the Woomera detention centre began a hunger strike. By June 24, 180-190
Loose Cannons Find those Binladenburgers! “Larry Ponemon, the CEO of Privacy Council, says that since September 11 he's been hired by at least one major supermarket chain to oversee the handing over to law enforcement agencies of the
BY JO WILLIAMS HAVANA — Critics continue to say that Cuba is undemocratic, closed off, repressive, and that critical ideas in general are suppressed. An investigation of the education system and the young people in Cuban schools paints a very
AFGHANISTAN Sham assembly installs warlord coalition BY NORM DIXON The much-hyped loya jirga — or grand assembly — was supposed to be post-Taliban Afghanistan's first step towards the creation of a representative democratic
REVIEW BY SARAH STEPHEN  Escape to Paradise Directed by Nino Jacusso With Duzgun Ayhan, Fidan Firat, Nurettin Yildiz and Walo Luond Distributed by First Hand Films Frontieres (Borders) Directed by Mostefa Djadjam With Lou
Earthquake risk at Lucas Heights BY ALEX MILNE Work is continuing at the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor, despite calls for the government to reconsider the project after an earthquake fault line was discovered there. The fault was
Abortion still an issue in Tasmania BY ANTHEA STUTTER LAUNCESTON — “Despite the emergency sitting of the Tasmanian parliament last December, ostensibly to pass legislation to solve the abortion access crisis, women still don't have full