Thousands of people joined a general strike in Greece June 14 and protesters in Athens tried to blockade parliament to prevent lawmakers from entering and voting on a new austerity plan. The rally turned violent as demonstrators hurled stones and petrol bombs, smashed windows and clashed with police, who used tear gas and stun grenades against the protesters. The riot left nearly 50 people injured, including 36 officers. Prime Minister George Papandreou said he would form a new government and put it to a vote of confidence in the coming days, hoping to win support for the austerity plan aimed at preventing the country from defaulting on its debt. Following Papandreou's announcement, two lawmakers from his party, including former Public Order Minister Giorgos Floridis, resigned their seats, dealing a new blow to the prime minister. (SETimes, June 16)

A court in St. Petersburg, Russia sent two members of a neo-Nazi group behind bars for life on June 15. The group was responsible for at least seven murders, the court found. While gang leader Alexej Vojevodin and follower Arťom Prochorenko were sentenced to life in prison, another 10 members were given sentences of between two and 18 years. The gang's victims include a Senegalese student shot in front of a night club in St. Petersburg, a man of North Korean origin who was stabbed to death on the street, and the anthropologist and ethnographer Nikolaj Girenko, who was shot to death in front of his home in 2004. Girenko was killed apparently because he frequently testified as an expert witness in trials of neo-Nazi perpetrators.

Authorities in Tunisia have recovered some 150 bodies of more than 250 African migrants who went missing after their over-crowded boat capsized in the Mediterranean earlier this week, the International Organization for Migration said in Geneva on June 4. The migrants were reportedly on their way to the Italian island of Lampedusa from Libya when their vessel ran aground and capsized some 19 nautical miles off Tunisia's Kerkennah islands. Survivors say there were more than 800 people on board when the accident occurred. Tunisia's coast guard and army managed to rescue about 570 from the ill-fated vessel. (RTT, June 3)

Authorities in Serbia on May 26 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. Mladic faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. He is most infamous for ordering the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war in 1995. Extradition proceedings to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague are to begin immediately.

Belarus's Minsk City Court last week sentenced former presidential candidate Andrey Sannikau to a five-year maximum security prison term for organizing protests following the re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko in December 2010. Lukashenko reportedly won 80% of the vote, while Sannikau was second with a distant 2.5%. Currently, four other presidential candidates are awaiting trial, while one was released in January, and another has fled Belarus to seek asylum in the Czech Republic.

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. Madrid's central square has been occupied for days by some 30,000 protesters, who have been dubbed "los indignados" (the indignant). Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero admitted he may not enforce the ban. "I have a great respect for the people protesting, which they are doing in a peaceful manner, and I understand it is driven by economic crisis and young people's hopes for employment," Zapatero said during a radio interview. (BBC News, May 21; Reuters, May 20)

A group of 150 "self-styled" (sic) anarchists stormed into an Athens hospital where a protester who was severely injured in a protest march on May 11 is being treated and attacked three police officers guarding him there, a police official said. Thousands of workers walked off the job, pouring onto the streets of Athens and other Greek cities to protest a package of proposed "reforms" and cost-cutting measures designed to save the crisis-hit country $33 billion through 2015. In Athens, some 30,000 marched on the nation's parliament building, jeering lawmakers and calling them "thieves" and "robbers." Police used tear gas and pepper spray in running street battles with black-clad youth. (Reuters, LAT, May 11)

Laurie Penny writes for the New Statesman, April 29:

This is England in 2011: as the country gears up for the Wedding of Mass Distraction, police up and down the country have been bursting into squatted social centres and private homes, arresting anyone whom they suspect of having connections with the anti-cuts movement, on the pretext of preventing disorder at the happy event—sometimes seizing known protestors on the street or from their cars.