North America

The federal government will support the private bill C-309 aiming at prohibiting wearing mask during a demonstration, said Sunday the Canadian Minister for Justice, Rob Nicholson. Accoring to the minister the dissimulation of the identity would be criminal. To take part in a riot while carrying a mask or dissimulate its identity would be criminal in Canada.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers is strongly condemning Quebec’s Bill 78, the law tabled in Quebec to end the 14-week student strike, for violating fundamental freedoms of association, assembly, and expression. Already, the bill has received strong criticism from the Quebec Bar Association, student groups, labour organizations, and civil liberties groups.

World leaders are convening at Camp David in Maryland for the G8 Summit. Leading nonprofits such as Save the Children and Oxfam are urging G8 leaders to live up to a 2009 pledge of $22 billion towards food security in developing nations of which only a quarter has been met. Activists are also urging G8 leaders to build on their previous commitments to urgently tackle hunger.

In Quebec there are more than 200,000 students on strike – they are on strike saying that the student fee increase is stopping a lot of them access to college and university education. The students have been on strike for four months. The response of the Quebec government was to this day take Law-78 onto its books, to break the student union and to break the student’s strike.

The Occupy Wall Street movement call for action “Another NYC Is Possible: May 10-15 Week of Actions Against Budget Cuts And Austerity” in solidarity with the global movement “MAY 12TH GlobalMay” that took place in over 80 cities.

New York people walked to Times Square and sit down together to read the statement we publish here:

Shareholder meetings can be routine, unless you are Bank of America, in which case it may be declared an “extraordinary event”. That is what the city of Charlotte, North Carolina called the bank’s shareholder meeting this week. Bank of America is currently the second largest bank in the US (after JP Morgan Chase), claiming more than $2tn in assets.

Labor and immigrant groups were joined by Occupy demonstrators nationwide on Tuesday in May Day rallies for economic injustice and humane immigration reform. In New York City, a long day of separate actions converged in a rally at Union Square and then a march down to Wall Street, where the Occupy movement began last year.

Labor and progressive groups are preparing for a national slate of protests on Tuesday in what’s expected to be one of the largest May Day turnouts since the immigrant rights marches of 2006 and 2007. Occupy Wall Street is seeking a turnout of tens of thousands under the slogan of “General Strike. No Work. No Shopping. Occupy Everywhere.”

Once again states parties, international organizations, and non-governmental organizations are meeting in Vienna to start another review cycle of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Unlike in 2007, however, we are returning to this first preparatory committee with a final document and an action plan adopted by consensus from the last Review Conference.

The United Nations (UN) urged the eight countries that remain outside the Chemical Weapons Convention to adhere to this instrument and advance in the destruction of such artefacts.
The call was made by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon in a message marking the Day of Remembrance for All Victims of Chemical Weapons, which anniversary is next Sunday.