Lead story

Aleppo: a pause for aid

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

RUSSIAN and Syrian guns will fall silent in Aleppo this week for a brief ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid into the terrorist-held pocket in the city and to allow civilians and any rebels who wish to surrender to leave. Meanwhile the Syrian army and its Russian, Lebanese and Iranian allies are readying for an influx of thousands of ISIS terrorists fleeing from the Iraqi city of Mosul, which is under heavy attack from the Iraqi army that has vowed to drive the terrorist militia out of the key city they have occupied since 2014.

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Aleppo: a pause for aid

40 per cent of homes not up to standard

FORTY per cent of homes in Britain are not up to the “living home standard” according to a report released on Monday by the charity Shelter.

Shelter has set the “living home standard” to be the equivalent of the “living wage” — not what you can just get by with but what you need to live a decent life.

Shelter created the living home standard over nine months, using a survey of the general public undertaken by Ipsos Mori for Shelter and British Gas, to set out the most important criteria that a decent home should meet.

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40 per cent of homes not up to standard

Editorial

Defend Russia Today!

THE RULING class stepped up its attack on press and media freedom this week with the arbitrary decision of a London bank to close all the accounts of a leading Russian international TV station. The National Westminster Bank (NatWest), part of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) that is largely owned by the State, told Russia Today (RT) that all its accounts would be closed in December. Scottish nationalist politician Alex Salmond denounced the move as something one might expect from a “tin pot dictatorship, not a liberal democracy”.

It seems any old rubbish can be televised under the guise of entertainment as long as the “news” conforms to guide-lines set by the establishment so ably represented by the BBC. But anything that challenges the bourgeois lie-machine, like Iran’s Press TV or the Russian stations, is dismissed as “propaganda” and “disinformation”.

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Defend Russia Today!