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The Spanish parliament was the scene of a sharp clash on April 6 over the March 18 European Union-Turkey “pact of shame” that will return up to 50,000 asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey. The asylum seekers — most fleeing from the Syrian civil war — will then be placed in an archipelago of detention centres. Acting Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, of the conservative People's Party (PP), defended the agreement, saying “things are getting better, we have a procedure”.
Thousands of protesters marched on Downing Street on April 9 to demand British Prime Minister David Cameron resign after revelations about his tax affairs emerged in preceding days in fall out from the huge Panama Papers tax haven leaks.
About 500 people rallied in Melbourne on April 2 against the proposed 1300 jobs cuts at the CSIRO. The rally, which follows rallies in Hobart and Canberra, was organised by the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), CSIRO Staff Association and Australian Youth Climate Coalition.
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) management planned to stop "doing science for science's sake" and would no longer carry out research for the "public good," unless it was linked to jobs and economic growth, emails between senior managers released to a Senate inquiry reveal. The emails are among almost 700 pages of internal CSIRO documents made available to a Greens-Labor convened inquiry into the proposal to slash up to 350 jobs in the organisation.
Cuban literacy campaign Wilcannia, Australia 2012.

More than 80 people packed into a lecture theatre at Sydney University on March 31 for a public forum entitled: "Increasing Aboriginal literacy: The Cuban 'Yes I Can!' literacy campaign in Australia".

Members of the Oromo community in Melbourne protest against the Ethiopian regime, January 3. Photos: Ali Bakhtiarvandi. “This government is at least better than previous ones,” remarked a 74-year-old Eritrean man to me last month in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, his longtime residence.
"Cool fuel" was the groovy title of the Ed! supplement about natural gas in the April 5 edition of The West Australian that gets distributed to all our schools. To be sure natural gas is "cool" when liquefied. But nowhere among the topics covered, such as "Careers in LNG", "Power to You" and "West is best" is there any mention of natural gas as a significant contributor to catastrophic global warming. Nor does it mention that because of fugitive emissions in the production cycle natural gas is up there with coal as a carbon polluter.
On March 27, international award-winning artist Gurrumul Yunupingu was admitted to Royal Darwin Hospital vomiting blood and unable to talk. The treatment he received there has led to accusations of structural racism in the NT health system. Gurrumul has suffered from Hepatitis B since he was three years' old, and his liver started bleeding as a result of his condition, causing him to vomit blood. His friends and family had taken him to hospital and left him there, confident he would be quickly treated and come home safe.
On April 8, US rock star Bruce Springsteen published the statement below on his website. *** As you, my fans, know I'm scheduled to play in Greensboro, North Carolina this Sunday. As we also know, North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are referring to as the “bathroom” law.
Jasmine Pilbrow faced court on April 7 after she stood up for a refugee who was being deported on her Qantas flight.
End the embargo of Cuba cartoon

New at LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal: Kurdish women struggle for a new society in Rojava and Fidel Castro: 'We don't need anything from the Empire'.

Australia's consumer affairs ministers have adopted a definition of "free range" eggs that allows eggs from hens kept at a stocking density of up to 10,000 birds per hectare — one bird per square metre — to be sold as "free range". This definition reflects pressure from industrial egg producers. Animal welfare advocates had supported the CSIRO's Model Code of Practice, which sets a limit of 1500 birds per hectare.