International

From the time when the human being was first able to produce fire and could count on this source of energy to cook food, defend the entrances of the caves where they lived, warm themselves and illuminate the night, and then raise the temperature in ovens and kilns that allowed the making of pottery, melting of metals, working with glass… up to the creation of life.

This Saturday is Nuclear Abolition Day — a global day of action to abolish nuclear weapons, and the opportunity to respond to the Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference outcome. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today sent a video message of encouragement, which can be seen at [www.nuclearabolition.org](www.nuclearabolition.org)

On June 5, 2010, thousands of people across the world will take part in coordinated local events to mark Nuclear Abolition Day. The message is simple: it’s time for governments to begin negotiating a Nuclear Weapons Convention to ban all nuclear weapons.
In some countries, protests will take place outside government buildings or at nuclear facilities.

Crossing the frontier and producing synthetic life for the first time, the discovery by a group of U.S. scientists, opens many areas of application while leaving open a new horizon for what we consider typical of the human being: the ability to make life. This is an extraordinary discovery that opens up the hope of better understanding the basic mechanisms that drive all life.

The moment so feared, so desired, so imagined, has arrived; the moment when the human being – by creating life – is transformed into God. The Science Journal of May 20 gives the news of the first synthetic cell, a cell completely controlled by artificial DNA. “A cell that changes the definition of what is meant by ‘life’.”

The NPT conference has come to an end after 4 weeks of intense debate and horse-trading in New York with little progress on disarmament. The Conference calls on Ban Ki-Moon to convene a conference to work on a nuclear weapon free zone in the Middle East. NGOs are disappointed by lack of progress on a convention to ban weapons and by the proliferation of nuclear energy.

As the NPT conference comes to an end with no hope on the horizon for a speedy disarmament, Hillel Schenker, from the Jerusalem-based Palestine-Israel Journal talks about the often talked about Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the Middle East. “One thing is clear—asking Israel to sign the NPT is a futile exercise, because it will not unilaterally disarm.”

The Non-proliferation Treaty Review Conference is in its fourth and final week. Parallel to the official meetings with delegates of states parties to the NPT, active members of NGOs are in New York to represent the interests of civil society. Diane Perlman of Psychologists for Social Responsibility puts the case for a change of consciousness regarding nuclear power.

In this article renewable energy activist, Alice Slater, points out the dangers of the world advancing in the proliferation of nuclear energy and calls on all countries to join the International Renewable Energy Agency as a way to make redundant article IV of the Non-proliferation Treaty “inalienable right” to nuclear energy.

The 17th of May marked the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHO). Events were held in tens of countries around the world to send a strong message that these forms of discrimination should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Portugal legalised same-sex marriage. Malawi sentences 2 gay men for the crime of homosexuality.