National News
NHS saddled with £65 billion PFI ‘mortgage’
THE TOTAL bill faced by the NHS for new hospitals, renovations and rebuilds under the private finance initiative (PFI) is currently £65 billion, according to official figures released last week.
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Unite call off BAA strike
THE GIANT union Unite last Monday called off planned strikes at six airports administered by BAA after negotiations with the company over a pay dispute that threatened to close Britain’s major airports over the bank holiday weekend.
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Britain’s natural heritage for sale?
ENVIRONMENTAL and conservation groups are sounding an alarm at proposed cuts of between 20 and 40 per cent to the budget of the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that may lead to the selling off of nature reserves and privatising parts of the Forestry Commission.
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The runaway train
THE TRANSPORT union RMT last week expressed shock after learning that a driverless London Underground train, which accidentally uncoupled from another train that was towing it, careered out of control on the Northern Line early on Friday morning.
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Delphi plant closure
THE GIANT union Unite last week reported that management at the manufacturing company Delphi had started consultation with the union over its decision to close its Kirkby plant in Liverpool by the end of 2011.
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Milburn to work for coalition
FORMER Labour Minister Alan Milburn last week accepted a role working for the Con-Dem coalition as a “social mobility tsar”.
He will be the third New Labour guru to work for the coalition, following Frank Fields and economist Will Hutton.
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24,000 apply for 220 BT places
A RECORD 24,000 young people recently applied for just 220 places on the BT apprenticeship scheme.
Dave Prentis, general secretary of the public sector union Unison commented: “The huge number of applicants to the BT apprenticeship scheme shows the shocking problem school leavers are facing in getting into the workplace.
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Untracked children miss out on education
THE EDUCATION watch-dog Ofsted last week warned that some children are not being educated because local authorities have difficulty tracking children who are not being taught.
This follows an Ofsted survey of 15 local authorities of different sizes across Britain. Not one of the authorities was “confident” that it knew the whereabouts of every child in its area.
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No to imperialist war-games, hands off the DPRK!
by New Worker correspondent
FRIENDS of the Korean revolution were out again in London last Tuesday outside the south Korean and American embassies to condemn the latest imperialist war-games on the Korean peninsula.
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International News
US plots while Baghdad burns
by our Arab Affairs Correspondent
IRAQI PARTISANS bombed the motorcade of a puppet minister in Baghdad on Wednesday while others gunned down a Housing Ministry staffer. On Tuesday resistance fighters targeted the puppet judiciary, attacking eight judges in Baghdad and the eastern province of Diyali with bombs and silenced weapons, killing two and wounding others.
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Pakistan: a tragedy of unprecedented magnitude
Radio Havana Cuba
AT LEAST 20 million people are suffering the severe effects of the rains and floods that are devastating large areas of Pakistan, where the situation is dire, especially for some three and a half million children who could die of hunger and diseases such as cholera, hepatitis and typhoid fever.
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Humanitarian catastrophe in Niger: where are the media?
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
THE BUZZ-WORDS of the moment are Naomi Campbell and blood diamonds, Cristiano Ronaldo and his troupe of girlfriends and the new soccer season. But where is the story about the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Niger where 670,000 children are at risk of starving to death and eight million people need emergency food assistance?
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China confirms its economic might
Radio Havana Cuba
IN ECONOMICS there are no miracles — only results. This was just confirmed by China after announcing that its economic achievements in the second quarter of the current year displaced Japan as the world’s second superpower, a deserved reality that surpasses its spectacular impact, given the sustainable economic growth of China in recent times.
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50 Years of Songun Leadership
by Ki Yong Sam
THE DEMOCRATIC People’s Republic of Korea has been advancing victoriously under the Songun revolutionary leadership, or Songun politics, to defend the country and push ahead with overall socialist construction with the Korean People’s Army (KPA) as the pillar and main force of revolution. Consequently all sectors of society including politics, the economy, culture and national defence have had great successes.
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Features
Speculators feast on Russian disaster
by Deirdre Griswold
THE RACE is already on in commodities markets worldwide to wring new fortunes out of the climate catastrophe now raging in Russia. It’s a chilling example of how capitalism works in a time of crisis.
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Wikileaks and the Pentagon’s disgrace
pravda.ru
ACCORDING to some recent information, the United States government is trying to reach the Wikileaks internet web manager, Australian Julien Assange, to arrest him for putting thousands of war documents on Afghanistan, which reveal many human rights violation and irregularities committed by US troops in that Asian country.
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What is going on in Afghanistan?
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
NINE YEARS ago, Nato was going to breeze into Afghanistan, sweep the Taliban from power and install a nice, stable Government, while the Tokyo and Berlin Reconstruction Conferences for the five years starting December 2001 pledged $13.4 billion for projects. In 2005, the Human Development Index for Afghanistan was 173 out of 178 countries. Today it is 181 out of 182.
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