THE 17th Congress of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) began in Durban, South Africa on October 5, 2015. It started with George Mavrikos, general secretary of WFTU announcing the names of the 45 member presidium. The presidium includes Comrades K Hemalata (CITU) and Amarjeet Kaur (AITUC) from India.The president of COSATU welcomed the delegates. Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa gave the opening remarks. Covering a gamut of issues, political and economical all over the world, he explained the challenges faced by the working class of South Africa.

THE national conference of the Indian Workers’ Association (Great Britain), one of the oldest NRI organisations, took place in Derby on September 11. Delegates from across the UK assembled to discuss and deliberate upon the report presented by Joginder Kaur on behalf of the Central Executive Committee of IWA (GB). The conference was organised in a hall dedicated to all the founders of the Association.

IT has been more than 16 months since the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia launched a war on Yemen, the poorest nation in the Arabian peninsula. The other members of the military coalition are the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and Kuwait. Most of the bombing raids are being conducted by Saudi planes these days. The UAE air force which was very active in the earlier phase of the campaign is now only playing a limited role. The UAE forces on the ground are concentrating their firepower on the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Daesh (Islamic State).

THE two day NATO summit held in Warsaw in the second week of July was billed as the most important one since the end of the Cold War. It was held in the wake of the “Brexit” vote and the looming threat it poses to the very concept of European unity. Britain has been America's foremost ally within the European Union (EU) and NATO. With the exit of the United Kingdom, the EU is theoretically better positioned to follow a more independent foreign policy. An important goal of the Warsaw summit was to project unity.

Beijing was expecting an adverse ruling on the South China Sea from the Permanent Court of Arbitration, an International Tribunal at the Hague and has taken the judgment on the dispute on July 11 in its stride. Senior officials have said that the situation in the South China Sea should not be allowed to escalate. The Chinese government had announced some months before that it would ignore the decision of the tribunal, saying that it had no jurisdiction over the case as the main dispute was over land in the form of islands and islets in the South China Seas.