Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou announced he would dissolve his cabinet as a general strike shut Athens in protest of his new austerity plan and protesters blockaded the doors of parliament.
A court in St. Petersburg, Russia, sent two members of a neo-Nazi group behind bars for life for the murder of several African immigrants, North Caucasians and anti-fascist activists in St. Petersburg and Moscow over the past several years.
Refugees fleeing the violence in North Africa continue to die at sea, prompting an investigation by the Council of Europe—and a move by Italy and France to rewrite the EU’s policy that permits internal passport-free travel.
Authorities in Serbia announced the capture of Ratko Mladic, ending a 16-year manhunt for the former military commander of the self-declared Serb Republic in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The European Union called for new sanctions against Belarus after former presidential candidate Andrey Sannikau received a five-year prison term for organizing protests following last year’s contested elections.
Tens of thousands of protesters have filled the main squares of Spain’s cities for the past week to protest government austerity measures—in defiance of a government ban imposed ahead of municipal and regional elections.
Thousands walked off the job in Athens and other Greek cities to protest a package of proposed “reforms” and austerity measures. Police used tear gas and pepper spray in running street battles with black-clad youth.
Police across the United Kingdom raided squats and community centers on the eve of the royal wedding, apparently fearing a replay of last month’s anti-cuts riots during the media spectacle.
Italy’s government announced it is indefinitely suspending plans to build the country’s first nuclear power plants—ahead of a June referendum on the atomic development plans, which the administration says is no longer necessary.
Even as the world is gripped by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, Russia announced it will build a reactor in neighboring Belarus—where large areas still remain closed off due to the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown.
Some 60,000 Germans marched against nuclear power, forming a 45-kilometer human chain from Neckarwestheim power plant to the city of Stuttgart in Baden-WĂĽrttemberg state.
Thousands of anti-fascists encircled Dresden to block a neo-Nazi “funeral march” commemorating the city’s 1945 bombardment, while fascists marched in Budapest to mark its fall to the Allies.
