National News

Graduate unemployment highest for 17 years

A RECENT survey of people who graduated in 2009 found that 8.9 per cent were still unemployed in January 2010 — the highest level of graduate unemployment for 17 years.

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Cuts threaten home care for elderly

THE LOCAL Government Association last week warned that spending cuts being enforced on local councils will destroy their ability to provide care for the elderly with conditions like diabetes, dementia and Parkinson’s disease.

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‘Unaffordable London’

THE HOUSING charity Shelter last week warned that the Con-Dem Coalition plans to cap housing benefit at £290-a-week for a two-bedroom property or £400-a-week for the largest homes will mean many people on low wages or unemployment benefit or income support will no longer be able to live in London.

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LRC calls for unity against the cuts

THE LABOUR Representation Committee rally, “Stop the Cuts! There is an Alternative”, in Manchester on Saturday 30th October brought together campaigners in unity against the cuts.

NUJ General Secretary Jeremy Dear outlined the alternative to cuts before briefly outlining the NUJ’s dispute with the BBC, which will see NUJ members on strike on 5th and 6th November (LRC members and supporters are encouraged to get to picket lines outside BBC buildings).

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Stopping the cuts in Brighton

by Ray Jones in Brighton

SEVERAL thousand people rallied and marched against the Con-Dem cuts in Brighton last Saturday. Organised by the local Stop the Cuts Coalition it was the largest demonstration in the town for some time and had strong support from the unions, including RMT, CWU, FBU, PCS, GMB, Unison and Unite. There were speakers from the Bright Start Nursery, whose jobs are under threat, the Socialist Party, who helped with the organisation, Unison and the National Pensioners’ Convention.

Perhaps the best received speaker was local Green Party MP Caroline Lucas who made a very strong contribution. And the worst received was from the local Labour Party whose defence of some cuts did not go down well. Most of those present clearly rejected all cuts — or at least any that harmed working people.

Police arrest African exchange teachers

POLICE in South Wales last week arrested and “mistreated” three teachers from Zanzibar in Tanzania in Cardiff as they were shopping for presents. They were in Wales as part of an exchange system.

Habib Seif Ali, Seif Haji Jaha and Haji Hassan Chum said they were handcuffed and strip-searched by police. After eight hours they were released without charge.

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International News

Brazil: Lula’s legacy continues

Radio Havana Cuba

AS WAS expected, Dilma Rousseff, a 62-year-old economist, has become the first woman president in Brazil’s history and now has ahead of her the challenge of deepening the changes initiated by her predecessor and political colleague, Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva, who turned the country into the premier Latin American power and a globally respected partner.

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Gaza children work to help families

by Siham Shamalakh in Gaza

STANDING under the sun in a dusty street, Ahmed Al-Massri looks older than his 13 years. As he sees a car parking in Gaza City’s upper neighbourhood, he rushes to offer to clean its windows.

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Western political models impossible to copy

People’s Daily (Beijing)

OVER THE years, in the name of offering advice for political restructuring, some Western forces and their supporters have constantly put forward so-called “constitutional reform” proposals focusing on multi-party systems and the separation of the government into three powers.

In doing so, the advocates of Western democracy, freedom and human rights mislead the public as well as attack the leadership of the Communist Party of China and the socialist system.

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Simpler and cheaper computers

by Arnaldo Coro Antich

Radio Havana Cuba

ARE YOU surprised by the title of this article? You shouldn’t be, since you must know that many computer design labs all round the world are at present involved in the creation of new computers with features not ever seen before, not even in the most recent generations of laptops, netbooks and mobiles.

We’re not talking about super-machines with amazing processing speeds, able to store a huge amount of information... We neither intend that they will feature a huge screen... But, certainly, all the engineers who are working on this process of creation agreed on several goals, which are:

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Rebellion, protest and the details of life

by H Sabbagh

PROTEST, rebellion and immersion in the details and complications of life are some of the most prominent features of the movies directed by Turkish-German director Fatih Akin that were shown last week at the Goethe Institute in the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The Fatih Akin film week was organised by the Goethe Institute in cooperation with the Turkish Embassy in Damascus and the event recapped Akin’s film career from his first feature-length film, Short Sharp Shock, to the award-winning The Edge of Heaven, with all the movies subtitled in Arabic.

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Features

Capitalism didn’t save Chilean miners

by David Sole

WHAT PROMPTED the Wall Street Journal, a pre-eminent publication of the highest summits of the big business and banking ruling class in the United States, to run the 14th October article “Capitalism Saved the Miners”? In the very first sentence Daniel Henninger cheered. He wrote, “The rescue of the Chilean miners is a smashing victory for free-market capitalism.”

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I, Spry: The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy

by Rob Gowland

LAST WEEK the Australian Broadcasting Corporation ran an insidious piece of anti-Communist propaganda in the form of a dramatised documentary. The programme was I, Spry: The Rise and Fall of a Master Spy and it is concerned with the career of Brigadier Spry, the head of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).

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Western intelligence wants to explode Russia’s North Caucasus

by Sergei Balmasov

WESTERN intelligence agencies are trying to destabilise the North Caucasus ahead of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014. This is the view of the Russian Presidential Plenipotentiary in the region, Alexander Khloponin, who last week highlighted the current particularly “hot” spot in Dagestan and Ingushetia where from time to time the Chechen underground shows signs of activity.

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