Trump’s deployment of warships to Strait of Hormuz escalates Iran war
The increasingly desperate actions of American imperialism express the strategic debacle it confronts after 35 years of uninterrupted wars of aggression.
•WSWS Editorial Board
Latest articles
“All this money for bombs but no money for education”: May Day protesters in US denounce war and dictatorship
Although officially dominated by Democrats and the labor bureaucracy, hundreds of thousands in the US marched on May Day to oppose war and defend immigrants and democratic rights.
•Our reporters
Trump withdraws 5,000 US troops from Germany as Berlin steps up rearmament
The announcement by President Donald Trump to withdraw 5,000 US troops from Germany and halt the planned deployment of US intermediate-range weapons in Germany marks a further escalation of the crisis in transatlantic relations.
•Johannes Stern
Further light shed on criminal US torpedoing of Iranian ship
The evasions and hypocritical declarations of “neutrality” by Colombo and New Delhi, along with the silence of the imperialist-aligned media, cannot cover up the fact that these governments were complicit in this US war crime.
•Wasantha Rupasinghe
Graham Platner: A bogus “pro-worker” face for the Democratic Party in Maine
Platner is being promoted as an outsider, but his campaign was recruited, packaged and launched through the AFL-CIO, Bernie Sanders and the Democratic Party apparatus.
•Jacob Crosse
Islamist offensive tacitly backed by Paris shakes Mali
Against the backdrop of the war against Iran and Russia, the conflict between the anti-imperialist aspirations of the Malian masses and the bourgeois politics of the Malian junta is emerging ever more clearly.
•Alex Lantier
Spirit workers lose paychecks and benefits as executives seek $10.7 million in “retention” bonuses
The collapse of Spirit has priced millions of working class travelers out of air travel overnight—and it is only the first casualty of the fuel crisis triggered by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
•Tom Hall
New sanctions, threats and military exercises set stage for US assault on Cuba
Amid escalating sanctions, military exercises, and threats by Donald Trump to take the island “immediately,” Washington is laying the groundwork for a regime-change war against Cuba.
•Andrea Lobo
Brazil’s unions isolate São Paulo education strikes
The struggles of teachers and students in São Paulo are part of a growing movement of the international working class against the austerity policies driven by the capitalist crisis and the effects of the war against Iran.
•Guilherme Ferreira
Australian Labor government axing public sector jobs to deepen budget cuts
The Albanese government is slashing thousands of public service positions—a warning of what is to come in next week’s budget.
•Mike Head
Union presents pay-cutting offer to New Zealand nurses
Nurses and healthcare workers should reject the offer presented by the NZNO, which would slash wages and do nothing to address the staffing crisis in hospitals.
•Tom Peters
Workers Struggles: The Americas
Thousands of nurses at long-term care facilities in the province of Ontario have voted to authorize strikes, while workers in Puerto Rico held May Day protests demanding the end of the Wall Street financial dictatorship over the US island colony.
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The new code of silence: Texas Tech University bans gender and sexuality teaching and research
The draconian directive is an obvious appeal to social and intellectual backwardness and an attempt to shove ultra-right Christian ideology down the throats of faculty, students and staff.
•Andrea Peters
The Revolutionary Communist Party abandons Corbyn only to embrace Zack Polanski’s Green Party
Building socialist consciousness means fighting to bring the historical and international experience of the working class to bear on contemporary political issues, in order to break the working class from its potential misleaders.
•Thomas Scripps
UK Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood targets children for brutal treatment in asylum seeker crackdown
In a joint letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer on April 27, almost 150 organisations—including social care workers, refugee charities, and fostering groups—accused the government of a “sustained attack on children’s rights.”
•Harvey Thompson
Australia: Interim report provides no answers on Bondi terrorist attack
The section of the report dealing with the role played by the federal policing and intelligence agencies, about which so many questions remain, has been suppressed entirely.
•Oscar Grenfell
“May Day Strong” in Chicago: Labor bureaucracy, Democrats seek to smother growing resistance to war and Trump dictatorship
With thousands of workers and young people marching to oppose Trump, the AFL-CIO and Democratic Party is trying to prevent this movement from evolving into a politically conscious challenge to oligarchic rule and the capitalist system that both parties defend.
•Kristina Betinis, Jerry White
Strike of Little Lake teachers in California shut down after 10 days
The decision was taken before teachers were given access to the full terms of the tentative agreement and before any meaningful rank-and-file review could take place.
•Marc Wells
Trump says US Navy will begin escorting ships out of the Strait of Hormuz
In a rambling Truth Social post on Sunday afternoon, President Trump wrote that the US would begin escorting hundreds of “Ships and Crews safely out of the Strait, ” and that any Iranian interference will “have to be dealt with forcefully.”
•Kevin Reed
Spirit Airlines collapses: 17,000 workers pay for Wall Street’s war on Iran
The government’s decision not to rescue Spirit, on the absurd grounds that they did not “have half a billion dollars laying around,” is deliberate class policy aimed at making the working class pay for the war.
•Tom Hall
Sri Lankan SEP/IYSSE meeting against US-Israeli war on Iran
SEP speakers explained that the military assault on Iran was part of US imperialism’s efforts to dominate oil and gas resources in the Middle East, as part of a far wider unfolding conflict against China and Russia.
•Our reporters
Break the isolation: Harvard graduate students’ strike must be expanded
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file Mack Trucks worker who is running as a socialist candidate for UAW president, is calling on workers to break the union's isolation of the nearly two-week walkout by 4,000 Harvard graduate student workers.
•Mike Ingram
The 2026 International May Day Online Rally and the tasks of the international working class
Speakers at the May Day rally analyzed the war against Iran as the culmination of a 35-year capitalist crisis and advanced a revolutionary program for the international working class entering a new period of global struggle.
•WSWS Editorial Board
Ypsilanti utility board halts University of Michigan nuclear weapons data center
The data center is an important element of the economic and military policy of the Democratic Party. Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the state Democratic establishment have worked to transform Michigan into an industrial, logistical and computational hub for the military-industrial complex.
•Stephen St. Clair
Two Prosecutors: A stubborn young lawyer confronts the criminal methods of the Stalinist bureaucracy
Many thousands of devoted revolutionaries, including most of the leaders of the October 1917 Revolution, were put to death between 1936 and 1938 by the counterrevolutionary bureaucracy.
•Fred Mazelis
Federal appeals court issues nationwide ban on telemedicine and mail access to abortion pill mifepristone
The decision has been appealed immediately to the US Supreme Court, which overturned abortion rights four years ago.
•Kate Randall
From Port Huron to postmodernism: The class politics of the “New” Students for a Democratic Society
The "New" SDS substitutes identity politics for class analysis, bourgeois nationalism for socialist internationalism and protest theater for the independent mobilization of the working class against the capitalist parties and the system they defend.
•Nancy Hanover
Labor blocks return of Australian citizens interned in Syria
The Albanese government’s actions set a wider precedent for barring the return of citizens deemed to be lacking in respect for the “values” prescribed by the ruling capitalist establishment.
•Mike Head
This week in history: May 4-10
South African gold mine explosion kills twelve miners; Red Army Faction founder Ulrike Meinhof is found dead in her prison cell; US conducts the test preparing hydrogen bomb; British General Strike begins.
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Socialist Equality Party intervenes at Unite event in Barnsley marking centenary of 1926 General Strike
An SEP stall next to Glass Works Square, where the rally assembled, promoted the party's public meetings this month across the UK.
•our correspondents
Unite uses Barnsley May Day and 1926 General Strike centenary to proclaim “rebirth of the trade unions”
The final Barnsley rally, with Graham as keynote speaker, represented the very forces responsible for the betrayal of 1984-85 miners’ strike and every betrayal thereafter.
•Robert Stevens
Israel violently and illegally intercepts Gaza flotilla, kidnaps organisers
This was a violent act of piracy, carried out by Israeli armed forces 600 nautical miles off the coast of Gaza, in international waters, with the intent to commit grievous bodily harm and even murder.
•Thomas Scripps
Australian inflation soars as economic effects of Iran war bite
The official cost-of-living index rose 4.6 percent in the 12 months to March, up sharply from 3.7 percent in February.
•Martin Scott
Australian Labor government’s assault on disability services to be based on brutal “functional assessments”
People with disabilities will be subjected to demeaning tests, aimed at kicking them off the NDIS or dramatically reducing the support they receive.
•Max Boddy, Oscar Grenfell
Australia: Victorian Labor leaks pay offer while teacher union prepares another sellout
The reported 28 percent pay rise offer reflects the fears of state and federal Labor governments that strikes in Victoria could become the starting point of broader action by teachers and others nationally.
•Sue Phillips
Vote “no” on the SEIU sellout agreement for Los Angeles school workers!
The central fraud of this contract is that it conceals massive cuts just over the horizon. A new budget proposal for the next school year is expected in mid-May—days after the ratification vote closes.
•Marc Wells
UIC graduate workers launch third strike in seven years against poverty wages
The more than 1,500 graduate workers who have walked out teach courses, run laboratories, and generate the research revenue that makes UIC function.
•Alexander Fangmann
Swedish government commits to coalition with fascist Sweden Democrats after upcoming parliamentary election
Over the past two months, the Swedish political establishment has moved to consolidate the Sweden Democrats—the far-right party that emerged from the neo-Nazi milieu of the 1980s—as the dominant force in official politics.
•Jon Andersson
World Bank details Iran war global commodity shock
The bank’s chief economist has warned that the war is hitting the global economy in a series of cumulative waves.
•Nick Beams
US national debt surpasses size of the economy, as Trump administration demands surge in military spending
The US national debt has crossed 100 percent of gross domestic product for the first peacetime year since 1946, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)—a milestone that arrives as the Trump administration is demanding a $1.535 trillion Pentagon budget and preparing for conflict with nuclear-armed China and Russia.
•Andre Damon
Inside Amir: Tehran, before US and Israeli bombs rained down...
One can’t help but wondering after two months of war and countless waves of bombing, and thousands of civilian deaths: Does that neighborhood still look like this?
•David Walsh
Capitalist crisis, war and the international class struggle
This speech was delivered by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North to open the 2026 International May Day Online Rally.
•David North
Democrats pave way for $70 billion infusion to ICE and Border Patrol
Congressional Democrats joined Republicans in ending the longest Homeland Security shutdown in US history while clearing the way for Trump’s immigration Gestapo to receive tens of billions of dollars, without any reforms, through a fast-track budget process requiring no Democratic votes.
•Jacob Crosse
Homelessness among young people in Germany has almost tripled since 2022
The housing crisis is destroying the lives of tens of thousands of children and young people: The number of homeless minors has almost tripled nationwide.
•Florian Hasek, Stephan Baloff
Stop the war against Iran!
The editor of the WSWS German site explained the social, political and historical basis of the struggle against imperialist war.
•Johannes Stern
PSTU leader Zé Maria sentenced to two years prison in Brazil for criticizing Israel: a grave attack on democratic rights
The case is a politically motivated fabrication and an assault on the political conscience of millions of workers and young people in Brazil and around the world.
•Statement of the Socialist Equality Group (Brazil)
Disney announces full deployment of facial recognition at Disneyland Resort
Expansion of biometric surveillance raises concerns over privacy loss, data sharing with authorities and erosion of anonymity in public life.
•Marc Wells
Executions in Florida and Texas: Condemned prisoners maintain their innocence
The twin executions of James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, and James Broadnax, 37, took place as the US death penalty machinery continues its accelerating pace in 2026.
•Kate Randall
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
India: Andhra Pradesh hospital sanitation workers at Vijayawada demand outstanding wages; Haryana fire and emergency services workers’ strike; Australia: Queensland rail workers resume industrial action; Victoria’s state school nurses demand wage parity.
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South Africa’s ruling class incites pogroms against migrants
This scapegoating must be understood in the context of the social order the ANC has presided over since 1994. While the legal framework of apartheid was dismantled, the underlying class structures have been preserved.
•Jean de Jager
Golders Green attack used to launch ferocious right-wing campaign against democratic rights and anti-genocide protests
Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded by holding those who have protested the Gaza genocide responsible, and promising draconian attacks on demonstrations.
•Thomas Scripps
Campaign begins for meetings on 100 years since British General Strike
Reports from SEP branches in London, Sheffield and Inverness are featured.
•Our reporters
Germany’s Morenoite RIO joins Left Party in support of war, attacks on the working class
The integration of the RIO Morenoites into the Left Party marks a further political shift to the right by this pseudo-left tendency, which can only be understood in the context of the current crisis of capitalism.
•Johannes Stern
Join the May Day Online Rally! For socialism! Against war, genocide and fascism!
The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site are holding our 13th annual International May Day Online Rally at 3:00 pm EDT.
•WSWS Editorial Board
German government passes war budget, agrees sharp attacks on healthcare
The cabinet has decided to massively increase military spending and correspondingly slash social spending. One “reform” will deliver a death blow to healthcare in its current form.
•Peter Schwarz
Senate Democrats voice support for major surge in military spending at Hegseth briefing
Leading Senate Democrats called Thursday for a major expansion of US military spending at the testimony by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was briefing the Senate Armed Services Committee on the Trump administration's plans to massively increase military spending.
•Andre Damon
Australia: 4 workers killed on the job in southeast Queensland in recent weeks
The known workplace fatalities around Brisbane now total seven in six months—part of a rising toll due to unsafe conditions, increased rates of exploitation by employers, official coverups and government complicity.
•Our correspondents
Amid massive government-employer assault on workplace safety, US unions sow complacency on Workers Memorial Day
With the Trump administration continuing its massive assault on workplace safety and environmental protections, the American trade union bureaucracy issued boilerplate statements calling for increased lobbying and voter drives.
•Shannon Jones
Sri Lankan government blocks release of Tamil writer’s books
The JVP/NPP government censors Tamil writers under the guise of “national unity," while allowing Sinhala chauvinist and militarist propaganda to circulate freely.
•Ananda Wakkumbura, Sujeewa Amaranath
Venezuela’s interim president paints Trump as defender of “peace” after Washington shooting
Associating Trump with “peace,” Rodriguez whitewashes the ongoing avalanche of war crimes unleashed by Washington across the globe and directly against Venezuela itself.
•Andrea Lobo
Anti-genocide activist denounces imperialist violence in the Middle East in statement supporting International May Day Online Rally
Dr. Abeer Omar, an assistant nursing professor at Trent University, in Peterborough, Ontario, denounced the systematic slaughter of healthcare workers by Israel in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, and the US and Israel’s targeting of civilians in their war of extermination against Iran.
•Our reporter
Unite cancels May Day strike by Doncaster bus drivers to meet with management
The May Day stoppage would have provided a platform to appeal beyond their depot—to bus workers and the wider working class.
•Simon Whelan
Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
Doctors in Spain continue monthly national strikes over pay and conditions; shop workers in Belgium at Aldi stores in wildcat strike over Sunday working; Nigerian oil and gas workers begin indefinite strike at Seplat Energy over pay and conditions
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UK Prime Minister Starmer survives vote to investigate whether he misled parliament, but Mandelson/Epstein crisis deepens
For the working class, the issue is not the personal fate of Starmer, or his replacement by another right-wing Labourite.
•Robert Stevens
4 years of the Amazon Labor Union: A balance sheet
The ALU could not simultaneously integrate itself into the orbit of the union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party while developing an independent movement of Amazon workers against the entire corporate and political structure those forces defend.
•Erik Schreiber, Tom Hall
The political issues in the New York City transit workers’ contract struggle
Mid-May marks the contract expiration for 40,000 subway and bus workers and the end of the cooling off period for 3,500 rail workers, posing confrontations with the Hochul and Mamdani administrations.
•Daniel de Vries
Hegseth details White House plan to surge military spending by 50 percent
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday on the Trump administration’s plan to increase military spending by 50 percent, from $1 trillion this year to $1.5 trillion in Fiscal Year 2027.
•Andre Damon
Latest round of tech layoffs at Microsoft and Meta shows need for a working class movement to defend jobs
Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being cut as the ruling class seizes on the artificial intelligence boom to eliminate vast sections of the workforce.
•Tom Hall
Australian NDIS workers and participants oppose Labor’s cuts to disability support
“These supports are not optional—they are essential to my daily survival, including help with eating, hygiene, dressing and maintaining basic safety and wellbeing.”
•Our reporters
James Comey appears in court following indictment for “86 47” social media meme
James Comey, the former FBI director who was fired by Donald Trump in 2017, was indicted by a North Carolina grand jury on Tuesday for a post on Instagram that prosecutors claim was a threat to kill the president.
•Kevin Reed
Supreme Court steps up attacks on democratic rights
The right-wing majority overturned congressional district lines in Louisiana and seemed poised to support Trump’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for immigrants.
•Patrick Martin
Fed keeps interest rates on hold as Powell declares he will stay on as a governor
Dissent by three members of the Fed’s interest rate setting body, because of what they see as a bias toward easing, indicates that a rate rise is not far away.
•Nick Beams
Fauci adviser Dr. David Morens indicted in political witch-hunt
The Trump administration has brought the indictment to cover up the criminal handling of the COVID pandemic under two administrations, and to legitimize the bogus claim that China deliberately created the coronavirus.
•Benjamin Mateus
Energy shortage: Macron wants to use war on Iran to wage class war in France
Ignoring the economic catastrophe threatened by Trump’s blockade of Iran, Macron is instead focused on using the energy crisis to justify imposing austerity measures already rejected by the French people.
•Alex Lantier
Ann Arbor teachers vote 1,084-4 to defeat sellout contract as teachers across Michigan face layoffs and poverty pay
Educators in Ann Arbor angrily reject demands for austerity, in a near-unanimous rejection of the union’s tentative settlement.
•Nancy Hanover
Morenoites campaign for Brazilian Army medal for metalworkers union amid escalating global war
The campaign signals a sharp lurch to the right by the PSTU Morenoites in a conjuncture marked by the escalating global of war and, internally, by dictatorial threats tied to the military.
•Eduardo Parati, Tomas Castanheira
Workers and young people in Canada and India urge participation in International Online May Day Rally
The International Committee of the Fourth International and its daily publication, the World Socialist Web Site, are organizing the International Online May Day Rally at 3pm US Eastern Time on Friday, May 1 to provide a unified revolutionary socialist program to workers around the globe in the struggle against imperialist war, dictatorship, and austerity.
•our reporters
Faculty, students oppose censorship of artist at University of North Texas
Sharp and legitimate criticism of Trump, of ICE, of Israel’s genocide, of the illegal war against Iran ... any and all of this is now termed a “disturbance,” a “disruption."
•David Walsh
Aldi DX tech workers in Germany: More than 1 in 3 jobs to be cut
On Monday, Aldi DX management announced that more than one in three IT jobs were being rationalised away at the Aldi Süd IT subsidiary in Mülheim an der Ruhr, exceeding the worst fears of the workforce.
•Dietmar Gaisenkersting
Unite union peddles sellout deal to end Birmingham bin workers strike
Behind the backs of striking workers, all sides are engaged in a coordinated operation to peddle an agreement they insist cannot be scrutinised.
•Tony Robson
King Charles III touts “special relationship” to Congress based on decades of US-UK imperialist wars
It is a measure of the true political character of the official opposition to Trump that the Democrats joined in multiple standing ovations for this reactionary diatribe, and that it was hailed by the British and European media.
•Chris Marsden
Iran war hits Australian economy
Banks are warning of a rise in bad debts, companies are issuing profit downgrades, and a consumer confidence index has fallen by the largest amount since the start of the pandemic, with retailers reported to be “struggling.”
•Nick Beams
Trump rushes migrant children through deportation courts, while Walz backs federal raids in Minnesota
Children in US custody are being rushed toward deportation before they can secure legal relief, while federal agents and Minnesota authorities carry out raids in Twin Cities under the pretext of fighting “fraud.”
•Jacob Crosse
German government plans massive cuts to health, pensions and social benefits
German military spending rose by 24 percent last year. The bill for this massive rearmament programme is being presented to the working class in the form of falling social spending, poorer healthcare and lower pensions.
•Peter Schwarz
Australian Education Union divides teachers to prepare sellout in Victoria—build rank-and-file committees
Even as striking educators rallied at the state parliament on March 24, the AEU apparatus was already moving to contain, dissipate and ultimately shut down this movement.
•Sue Phillips
Australian pseudo-left Socialist Alternative hysterically denounces workers who voted for One Nation
Socialist Alternative declared that all those who voted for the right-wing party were “racist scum” who needed to be “crushed,” while covering up for Labor and the trade union bureaucracy.
•Oscar Grenfell
Canada’s Liberal government secures parliamentary majority after seven years of minority rule
Corporate Canada has greeted the Liberals’ pasting together of a parliamentary majority with a chorus of calls for the government to act “boldly” in imposing “sacrifices” on working people.
•James Clayton
US Agriculture Department reports food price increases from Iran war, tariffs and drought
The US Department of Agriculture issued a Food Price Outlook on April 24 which showed significant increases in a range of food prices, with more on the way, due to the economic shocks caused by the Trump administration’s illegal war against Iran, tariffs and the prolonged drought across much of the US.
•Kevin Reed
Charles III in Washington: Monarchy, oligarchy and the repudiation of 1776
Charles III’s address to Congress, under the patronage of Trump and before an audience of billionaires and Democrats, exposed the convergence of monarchy and oligarchy in the repudiation of the democratic principles of 1776.
•Joseph Kishore
School budget proposal threatens 200 job cuts in Paterson, New Jersey
The schools in New Jersey’s third largest city are being deprived of the resources that the state itself acknowledges they need to provide a “thorough and efficient” education.
•Erik Schreiber
Justice Department revives firing squad, electrocution and gas asphyxiation for federal executions
The DOJ report reinstating multiple methods for federal executions marks a further regression into barbarism by an administration that has made the expansion of state killing a central pillar of its political program.
•Kate Randall
Amid popular outrage, no official explanation of secret CIA operation in Mexico
Washington has made clear there will be no explanations, let alone apologies, after two CIA agents died in a road accident in Chihuahua during an operation kept secret from the Mexican government.
•Andrea Lobo
The gutting of the NIH and the capitalist assault on public health
The dismantling of public health through NIH funding cuts, CDC censorship and Medicaid rollbacks is a deliberate attack on the working class by the capitalist elite, for whom military spending and private profit supersede any concern for the American people.
•Benjamin Mateus
1,100 artists call for boycott of Eurovision over Israel’s Gaza genocide
The letter is a moving assertion of opposition to the ongoing genocide and the cultural devastation that accompanies it.
•Paul Bond
Italy’s Meloni government in crisis as rift with Israel and Trump opens
Rising working class opposition to war and austerity and inter-imperialist antagonisms have forced damaging zigzags in Italian foreign policy.
•Marc Wells
UNDP report exposes vulnerability of South Asia’s economies to US war against Iran
South Asia accounts for the largest share of people—an estimated additional 8.8 million—being pushed into poverty by the Iran war, with the region particularly exposed to rising food and energy costs and falling remittances.
•Saman Gunadasa
Gunman charged with attempted assassination of Trump: The political issues
The response of the media and political establishment is characterized by a staggering hypocrisy, wrapped in the sanctimonious refrain: “There is no place for violence in politics.”
•Joseph Kishore
Australia: Labor’s aged home care cuts continue
Hundreds of thousands of retired workers, mostly depending on poverty-line aged pensions, are still facing prohibitive costs under the Support at Home program, which the Labor government launched last November.
•Mike Head
Gettysburg and the New Birth of Freedom—then and now
We are publishing a lecture delivered by WSWS contributor Tom Mackaman to the International Youth and Students for Social Equality at Gettysburg University on April 23.
•Tom Mackaman
Global military spending surges to record $2.887 trillion
Global military spending hit a record $2.887 trillion in 2025—the highest level ever recorded and the 11th consecutive year of growth, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported Monday.
•Andre Damon
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