National News
Rochdale council accused of ‘criminalising homelessness’
CIVIL liberties campaigners have urged the Labour-dominated Rochdale Borough Council to ditch proposals banning people from “placing themselves in a position to beg or solicit money”.
The campaigners claim the local authority is considering using Public Space Protection Orders (PSPO) against homeless people by proposing 10 separate offences, including a ban on people “placing themselves in a position to beg or solicit money” and introducing on-the-spot fines for swearing in public.
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Muslim women demonstrate solidarity with terror victims
AROUND 100 Muslim women formed a human chain across Westminster Bridge on Sunday evening in a show of solidarity with the victims of the terror attack on the bridge last Wednesday that claimed four lives.
The quiet protest, which was organised by the Women’s March, saw around 100 women hold hands and bow their heads in silence at 4pm for a five-minute silence.
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Nae tae Nazis in Edinburgh
MORE than 400 anti-fascists came out on the streets of Edinburgh last weekend to block a planned “White Pride” march by the National Front (NF) — tiny rump organisation that has recently swelled a little by acting as a dustbin for the dregs of the English Defence League (EDL) and British National Party (BNP) after their collapse.
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Lambeth to bulldoze council estate
THE LONDON Borough of Lambeth decided on 23rd March to demolish the Central Hill housing estate in Upper Norwood. The estate houses 2,000 residents in 450 homes built between 1966 and 1974.
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Pret a Manger aims to use unpaid teenage workers
THE SANDWICH retail chain Pret a Manger is planning to solve a staff crisis by offering unpaid work experience to around 500 teenagers in Britain.
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Ex-cyber security chief accuses Government
MAJOR General Jonathan Shaw, the former cyber security chief at the Ministry of Defence, last week accused the Government of exploiting the terror attack in Westminster last week to grab more unnecessary and intrusive surveillance powers.
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NHS to cut cheap drugs
NHS CHIEF Simon Stevens last Tuesday announced a new list of items to be banned from NHS prescriptions in order to save £128 million in costs.
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NHS Health - Unions United
by our Scottish political correspondent
SCOTTISH National Party (SNP) Health Secretary Shona Robison has achieved the remarkable feat of uniting all trade unions with members working in the NHS.
From the British Medical Association (BMA) to Unite the Union, all unions are decidedly unimpressed by her announcement that NHS staff were to receive a miserly one per cent pay rise at a time of 2.3 per cent inflation. This strict cap was only relaxed for the very lowest paid workers, who get a flat rate increase of £400. The MSPs voted themselves a 1.8 per cent pay rise late last year.
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Holyrood News
by our Scottish political correspondent
The Scottish Parliament recently achieved a remarkable, if unheralded, anniversary. This was the first anniversary of the Abusive Behaviour & Sexual Harm (Scotland) Bill. Its remarkable feature was that this was the last Bill to be passed into law on the 23rd March 2016. Since then not a single new law has been concluded by the SNP government.
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not an inch
by our Scottish political correspondent
British Prime Minister Theresa May and Scotland’s first minister Nicola Sturgeon met on Monday, just 24 hours before the Scottish Parliament’s scheduled vote for a second independence referendum. The private meeting, in a Glasgow hotel, lasted for an hour. But despite the smiles of both leaders, for the benefit of the media, neither of them was prepared to budge an inch from their declared positions.
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Defending the DPRK in Belgravia!
by New Worker correspondent
NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other Korean solidarity activists outside the Malaysian embassy in London’s Belgrave Square last week to demand an end to the hostile actions of the Malaysian government against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
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Crying out for peace!
by New Worker correspondent
LAST Tuesday the Bristol CND Town Crier, our own comrade Alex Kempshall, announced that a United Nations (UN) conference had opened on Monday aimed at negotiating a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons and leading towards their total elimination. Members of Bristol CND also handed out hundreds of leaflets, celebrating the conference, to workers returning home after their day at work.
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International News
No room for traitors in Donbas
DONI
Alexander Zacharchenko, the leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), spoke last week about the negative response in the Donbas to reports that the deposed Ukrainian president and other members of the former political elite were planning to return to Donbas. This, he said, was the normal reaction of normal people.
Zacharchenko said: Zacharchenko said: “In reality, Yanukovych is the incumbent president of Ukraine. He didn’t hand over his power. There were no normal elections, and everything that occurred during his exile and flight is the illegal seizure of power. But I would like to clear the air once and for all: Yanukovych has nothing to do with anything dealing with the Donetsk People’s Republic.
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Everyone must work together for Hong Kong’s future
by Du Mingming
CARRIE Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was elected fifth-term chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Sunday.
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Syrian army scores new victories
Xinhua
SYRIAN government troops supported by Russian air force have scored a number of victories in the west and the centre of the war-torn country, the Russian General Staff said on Tuesday.
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Vietnam stands shoulder to shoulder with Cuba
by Pavel Jacomino
VIETNAMESE President Tran Dai Quang reiterated his country’s determination to stand shoulder to shoulder with Cuba in hard times on the arrival of Cuban Defence Minister General Leopoldo Cintra Frias in Hanoi for talks last week.
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French Guiana gripped by general strike
Telesur
The former French penal colony is nowadays fully integrated in the French central state. Guiana is a part of the European Union and its official currency is the Euro.
FRENCH Guiana workers began a general strike on Monday that closed schools, universities and shops across the territory, as a Black-run group and unions escalated their demands for higher wages and a better quality of social services.
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The Volga saloon: return of a Soviet legend?
Sputnik
RUSSIA’S GAZ Group, the Nizhny Novgorod-based automotive conglomerate known for their production of a variety of heavy and light trucks, commercial vans, buses and military vehicles, is considering bringing back the Volga brand, widely remembered in Russia and the post-Soviet space as a legend of Soviet executive class cars.
In an interview for Russian business daily Vedomosti, Siegfried Wolf, chair of Russian Machines Corporation, GAZ Group’s parent company, revealed that the Volga brand may return following almost a decade-long hiatus, albeit now in a different class.
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Features
The war on Iraq in 2003 was and will always be a crime
by John Wight
THE MONTHS leading up to the war in Iraq, unleashed on 20th March 2003, saw the very best of humanity engaged in a struggle with the very worst for the right to shape the future.
When it comes to the very best of humanity, we are talking an anti-war movement that for a brief moment grew so large, powerful and determined that the New York Times described it as a second superpower on its front page. It did so in response to the momentous international protest that took place on 15th February, 2003, when between 12—15 million people took to the streets of cities and towns across the globe to demand an end to a drive to war, which by then looked well-nigh unstoppable.
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Ida B Wells: Anti-lynching crusader
by Abayomi Azikiwe
THE MANY references by African-American women intellectuals and activists to educational achievement, economic self-reliance, sobriety and religious adherence suggest that Western bourgeois values influenced their thinking and organisational approaches. The social conditions created by Reconstruction’s failure must be considered, however.
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Fake news, false news, censorship and the MSM
by Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
THE LATEST buzzword on the Internet is fake news. But what is the difference between fake news, false news and censorship? And why this sudden panic about fake news, after the mainstream media has made millions by peddling lies and swapping pictures for decades? Could it be that the “Main Stream Media (MSM)” has lost the credibility battle by selling lies as news and now has nothing else to do but to lash out?
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