National News
Nurses to take on doctors’ work
THE GOVERNMENT’S latest move to cover the growing shortage of junior doctors — and to undermine the junior doctors’ long running dispute against the imposition of a new contract — is to call on nurses, paramedics and pharmacists to take on a number of the tasks currently being performed by doctors.
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Did Cameron break election laws?
DOZENS of Tory MPs are now facing investigation over accusations that they over-spent their local campaign budget allowance.
But new evidence suggests that Prime Minister David Cameron may be involved. This followed complaints from Adrian Sanders, the former Liberal Democrat MP for Torbay who lost his seat to a Tory in the 2015 election.
Sanders claims the costs (including postage) of mail shots sent directly from Cameron to voters in Torbay should have been included in the local campaign budget allowance.
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Academy trust praised by Cameron collapses
THE BIRMINGHAM-based Perry Beeches Academy Trust, which used to run five schools, has collapsed leaving huge debts and questions about financial irregularities.
Liam Nolan, the chief executive and former “super head” praised by David Cameron, has been forced to resign after an investigation uncovered financial mismanagement.
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Former BBC chair concerned about anti- Corbyn bias
SIR MICHAEL Lyons, who chaired the BBC Trust between 2007 and 2011, admitted last week in a radio interview that the corporation is becoming increasingly biased and said he felt that political pressure was to blame.
“I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that the BBC has sought to hedge its bets of late. There have been some quite extraordinary attacks on the elected leader of the Labour Party, quite extraordinary.
“I can understand why people are worried about whether some of the most senior editorial voices in the BBC have lost their impartiality on this,” he said.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
NOTHING much has happened in Scottish politics since the election apart from the formalities.
The swearing in of newly elected Members of the Scottish Parliament was an occasion for the Scottish National Party (SNP) to make utter fools of themselves and many seized the opportunity with both hands.
They all wore a white rose. Not because they are Yorkists but to symbolise their attachment to the reactionary Tory house of Stewart, whose attempts to capture the British throne were finally defeated in 1746 by a British Army whose large Scottish contingent greatly out-numbered the unfortunate highland Scots conscripted by their feudal chieftains into the rebel Jacobite army.
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Nakba remembered
by New Worker correspondent
SUPPORTERS and activists from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) gathered last Sunday for a cultural event to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the Nakba catastrophe, Registered Alive, at the Courtyard Theatre in London’s Hoxton district.
The performances included a Dabke dance by the Al Zaytouna Dance Theatre, the renowned actor Maxine Peake reading from Masoud’s latest play The Shroud Maker, a reading by British Egyptian poet Sabrina Mahfouz (pictured right), a live score from musician and composer Dave Randall, and the comedian Mark Thomas reading from his book Extreme Rambling, about his walk along the entire length of the Israeli Separation Barrier in 2010.
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The Co-operative Bank bows to US sanctions against Cuba
by Catriona Goss
THE Co-op Bank’s chief executive has finally confirmed in writing that the closure of the accounts of the British Cuba Solidarity Campaign (CSC) was due to the sanctions imposed by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
The Co-op Bank closed the bank accounts of the CSC in November 2015, citing amongst the reasons a change in its “risk appetite” and “global regulations”.
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International News
Maduro warns of new US plot against Left
Telesur
OVER 50,000 people are estimated to have been killed during the decade-long US-backed Operation Condor against leftist movements in South America.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said right-wing leaders in South America are generating chaos in order to pave the way for a US intervention.
A new Plan Condor, similar to the one that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, is being implemented against progressive governments in Latin America and the Caribbean region, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said during a press conference last week.
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Palestinian refugees yearn for home
by Hou Qiang
DEPRESSION and homesickness can easily be read on the wrinkled face of 82-year-old Palestinian Musbah Haniya. He spent 68 years of his life as refugee in the Gaza Strip after his home-town became part of Israel following the 1948 Arab—Israeli war.
Haniya now lives in a poor run-down home in western Gaza city’s Shati refugee camp, one of the most overcrowded spots in the world.
Despite his age, Haniya can still recall the events of the Nakba, the day marking the mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the war between the Arab armies and Israel in 1948.
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French President standing now at record low
Sputnik
FRENCH President François Hollande’s popularity has plummeted to a record low of 17 per cent as he faces another day of protests against his reforms of the strictly codified labour laws that have sparked massive opposition. According to the latest poll by Odaxa for L’Express newspaper and France Inter radio, only 17 per cent
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What is the most corrupt country in the world?
By Lyuba Lulko
“I AM not going to demand any apology from anybody. What I am demanding is the return of the assets,” Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari said, responding to David Cameron’s remarks about “fantastic corruption” in the African country. Strangely enough, the remarks came from the person who found himself in the midst of the Panama Papers scandal and governs a major hub in a global corruption chain.
During a reception at the Global Anti-Corruption Summit in London, British Prime Minister (PM) David Cameron said: “We had a very successful Cabinet meeting this morning talking about the anti-corruption summit... We have got the leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming to Britain, Nigeria and Afghanistan — possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.”
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Buena Vista Social Club says goodbye
THE Buena Vista Social Club, the orchestra that is considered an ambassador of traditional Cuban music in the world, said a final goodbye last Saturday on stage in Cuba.
With two concerts last weekend at the Karl Marx Theatre in Havana, the band completed its Adios Tour, which took them to stages of all five continents for one-and-a-half years.
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Leafing through online literature for China’s Harry Potter
by Lyu Dong and Li Zhengwei
IF China’s film market is a flame burning bright, the country’s online literature is increasingly its fuel.
The world’s second-largest film market, with a box office of 6.8 billion dollars in 2015, is churning out top-grossing films inspired by popular novels published online.
As the self-publishing phenomenon has shaken up the literary scene in the West, writers in China have increasingly eschewed conventional publishing models and found readers on the Internet. Online-only publishers have sprung up and their releases are proving hugely popular.
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Thuyen’s poems printed in English
VNS
IN Nha Thuyen’s understanding, the word, as a living being, is vulnerable.
Her latest book of poetry, Tu Tho, Nhung Nguoi La, expresses her respect for words, so it is fitting that it has been translated into English by Kaitlin Rees.
The book, Words Breathe, Creatures of Elsewhere, can now be purchased worldwide from Vagabond Press Publisher for $25.
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Features
Parliamentary coups: the new strategy of Latin America’s Right
by Pablo Vivanco
LIKE Honduras and Paraguay, Brazil’s elites used the legislature against Dilma Rousseff. Is Venezuela next?
For most, the decades of the 1970s and 1980s are regarded as a dark period for Latin America.
The majority of South American countries were taken over by brutal military juntas, whilst in Central America civil wars claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands. The armed forces in the region, often trained and financed by the United States, ruled through force and where civilian governments didn’t heed their agendas, these were ignored or overthrown.
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Crime and punishment
by Rob Gowland
AS EVERYONE knows, the USA is “the greatest country on Earth”. The US propaganda machine drums it into people relentlessly. So relentlessly, in fact, that one is moved to say — taking a line from the Bard — methinks thou dost protest too much!
Apart from the crushing poverty, unemployment, homelessness, violence and crime, the heartland of capitalism is also plagued by persistent, pervasive and institutionalised racism. The lynchings that caused Paul Robeson to proclaim “we charge genocide!” in the 1940s may have ceased but they have been replaced by the mass jailing of African Americans, fodder for the USA’s commercial prison industry.
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