National News

Pale and hungry” children filling pockets with school food

UNDERNOURISHED children with grey skin are filling their pockets with school food to take home and east later according to reports from headteachers given at the conference of the National Education Union last week in Brighton. The union, in conjunction with the charity Child Poverty Action, conducted a survey of 900 headteachers on the effects of poverty on schoolchildren.

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Redwood admits cuts unnecessary

JOHN Redwood MP, once a rising star of Margaret Thatcher and John Major’s front bench just became one of the first Tory MPs to admit that austerity is actually a bad economic policy and that the Tories’ fixation on reducing the national deficit by making cuts to public services is completely misguide

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Police arrest racist bomb-maker

DEVON Police last week charged Steven Bracher in the village of Bishops Tawton following a bomb squad investigation that revealed a nine-kilogram fertiliser bomb under his bed and a number of pipe bombs.

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NHS doctors retiring early

THE NUMBER of doctors retiring early from general practice has doubled over the past five years as senior GPs have grown weary of Tory cuts and soaring waiting lists.

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Teachers consider strike action

TEACHERS belonging to two major unions last week voted increased action in support of a substantial rise in teachers’ pay at their annual conferences over the Easter break.

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Scottish Political News

by our Scottish political affairs correspondent

Poverty in Scotland

“SCOTS tycoon’s radical bid to end the scourge of child poverty” was how the Glasgow based Herald headlined the announcement that multi-millionaire Sir Tom Hunter is giving £2.5 million to an “innovation fund aimed at trialing inventive approaches to tackling the problem.”

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Hawking’s legacy will live foreverever

Xinhua

THE world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking has inspired the study of the universe, and his legacy “will live forever,” said Pau figueras Barnera, a post-doctoral student who followed the professor in studying black holes in 2010.

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Farewell to Neil Harris

by New Worker correspondent

FRIENDS and comrades joined relatives and friends at the Mortlake Crematorium to pay their last respects to Neil Harris last week. New Communist Party leader Andy Brooks, Daphne Liddle, Theo Russell and Dermot Hudson, along with Chris Coleman from the RCPB (ML), said farewell to Neil Harris at the funeral in Richmond that celebrated a life dedicated to the struggle for

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International News

French workers launch mass protests

Workers World (US)

FACED WITH lay-offs, down-sizing and privatisation of public services, public workers in France numbering in the hundreds of thousands held a countrywide protest on 22nd March. Many railway workers stayed off the job and announced a series of off-and-on strikes throughout the spring. Some teachers and workers in government administration also went on strike, as did air traffic controllers.

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Sleepless in Kosovo: a new war in the making?

Sputnik

THE US State Department has alerted US citizens to the heightened risk of terrorist attacks in Kosovo, particularly during holiday seasons, and warned them to “exercise caution at holiday festivals and events around the Catholic and Orthodox Easter celebrations.”

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Winnie Mandela Passes Away

THIS WEEK South Africans mourned the passing of veteran anti-apartheid fighter Winnie Mandela, who died on Tuesday at the age of 81. She became a reflection of South African women during the years of repression against the majority black population.

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Syrians find proof of American aid to terrorist

FOLLOWING the liberation of East Ghouta, the Syrian military has found an extensive network of tunnels with underground hospitals that were used by terrorist groups to move safely and launch raids on Syrian army positions.

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Features

H2 CLASS="newworker18RedBold">Friendship that benefits both sides

Global Times

KIM JONG UN, chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea and chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), paid an unofficial visit to China last week and was warmly received by Chinese president Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The two leaders held candid and friendly talks, stressing the need to inherit and carry forward the traditional China—north Korea friendship. De-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula and safeguarding peace and stability on the peninsula were also top of the agenda.

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Democracy and social media

by Daphne Liddle

THE CAMBRIDGE Analytica scandal burst into the headlines a couple of weeks ago, causing much alarm that Facebook — and possibly other forms of social media — are being mined for massive amounts of personal data on all users, their best friends and their cats, in order to exert undue influence on millions of people on what they buy and who they vote for.

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Sarkozy’s downfall: Gaddafi’s and Libya’s revenge

Sputnik

NONE OTHER than Julius Caesar reminds us that “fortune, whose power is very great in all spheres, but particularly in warfare, often brings about great reversals by a slight tilt of the balance.”

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