National News
Government bars visa to Skripal relative
VICTORIA Skripal, the niece of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian double agent recovering from a serious poisoning attempt and the cousin of his daughter Yulia, who was also poisoned, has written to Theresa May after Britain denied her an entry visa to visit her relatives in Salisbury Hospital.
The two poisoning victims, who were found unconscious on a freezing park bench at -5 degrees Celsius in Salisbury on 4th March, are both now conscious and said to be making a good recovery.
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RMT concerned over alarmist headlines
THE TRANSPORT union RMT last week expressed serious concern over a front-page article last Friday in the London Evening Standard headlined: “PURGE OF EXTREMIST WORKERS ON LONDON TRANSPORT”. The editor in chief of the Standard is former Chancellor George Osborne.
The article said that the Minister of State for Security, Ben Wallace, was carrying out a “purge of London’s transport system to protect the public from another Islamic State attack”.
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A third of London’s EU workers go unpaid and suffer abuse
MORE THAN a third of London’s migrant European Union (EU) construction workers have not been paid for work and 33 per cent have experienced verbal or physical abuse, according to new research.
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Some voters will need ID in May local elections
THE GOVERNMENT announced last week that in five trial areas people who wish to vote in the coming local elections will have to bring some form of identification with them to the polling stations.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political correspondent
“THE SNP believe that the NHS is our most important public resource and we will do everything we can to ensure that it is properly funded and protected as a public service” proclaims the Scottish National Party (SNP) on their website. After a decade of SNP rule the reality is a somewhat different.
The present Health Secretary is Shona Robison, who is mainly qualified for the task by being a close crony of the previous incumbent, Nicola Sturgeon, now first Minister. Sturgeon also pledged that her Westminster MPs would vote against any plans to privatise the NHS or cut health spending in England, but SNP MSPs at Holyrood never make the slightest comment about problems under their control.
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Preserving Vietnamese culture
VNS
THE BRITISH Council (BC) in Vietnam has launched a new project aimed at the preservation of Vietnamese cultural heritage, particularly in music and film
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The Day of the Sun in London
by New Worker correspondent
COMRADES honoured the life-time achievements of Kim Il Sung at a Korean Friendship Association (KFA) meeting in central London last weekend. Kim Il Sung founded the communist movement that liberated the country from Japanese colonialism, defeated the might of US-led imperialism in the Korean War and led the drive to build the modern, socialist republic that exists today in the north of the divided peninsula.
Kim Il Sung was born on 15th April 1912 and his birthday has long been celebrated as the Day of the Sun by everyone who stands by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The Day of the Sun is the biggest public holiday of the year in Democratic Korea
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Hamilton is big winner at London’s Olivier Awards
Xinhua
THE NEW American musical Hamilton collected seven prestigious theatre gongs at a glittering ceremony at London’s Royal Albert Hall on Sunday. The musical, being staged at the West End’s Victoria Palace theatre, received 13 Olivier nominations, the highest ever in the history of the awards.
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International News
New Israeli aggression against Syria
Sputnik
TWO ISRAELI warplanes rocketed a Syrian airbase in the Homs province early on Monday. “On 9th April, from 03:25 to 03:53 Moscow time, two Israeli Air Force F-15 jets, carried out an air-strike by two guided missiles on the T-4 airfield from the Lebanese territory and without entering Syria’s airspace,” the Russian Defence Ministry announced on Monday. According to the Russian military, the strikes were carried out from Lebanese airspace.
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Catalan leader remains defiant
Sputnik
THE FORMER president of the Spanish region of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, has demanded “the immediate liberation” of all politicians imprisoned for taking part in the Catalan independence process and has called for a dialogue to resolve the region’s political situation.
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Former south Korean leader jailed for corruption
by Yoo Seungki
IMPEACHED south Korean President Park Geun Hye was sentenced to 24 years in prison last week on corruption charges that exposed the deep-rooted collusive ties between politicians and businessmen.
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Winnie Madikizela-Mandela ¡presente!
Workers World (US)
WINIFRED “Winnie” Mandela, a heroic freedom fighter in the South African anti-apartheid struggle, died at the age of 81 on 2nd April in a Johannesburg hospital after a long illness. She was a member of South Africa’s parliament until her death.
She was an inspiration to oppressed women worldwide who joined the mass anti-apartheid solidarity movement, including this writer, who was a founding member of the US Out of Southern Africa Network. That organisation demanded that US corporations divest from the economy of the racist apartheid regime in the mid-1980s
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Greece in NATO: 66 Years of Tragedy
ML Today
IT WAS 66 years ago, on 18th February 1952, when the Greek Parliament ratified the country’s accession to the imperialist North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Greece’s NATO membership turned the country into a base for the adventurous plans of the imperialists, both against the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries and in the broader region of the Middle East. At the same time, it was a decision that led our people into very dangerous situations, with poignant results which, seven decades later, continue to afflict Greece’s political affairs.
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Features
The US is an oligarchy not a democracy
Granma
“THE GOVERNMENT of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.” By replacing the term “people” in Abraham Lincoln’s well-known phrase with those who have real power in the USA, we gain a more exact idea of how US politics and society work.
The country that presents itself as a universal model of democracy does not meet the basic standards of a system in which the majority makes decisions.
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1918: British intervention in Russia unlawful and indefensible
Sputnik
BRITISH military intervention in Russia in 1918—1919 was unlawful and indefensible, British government papers held by the National Archives reveal. It turned Russian public attitudes towards Britain from friendly to hostile.
In March 1918 the Bolshevik government signed a peace treaty with Germany, as they had promised to the nation exhausted by four years of the devastating and senseless first World War. The Russian Revolution was triggered by the overwhelming public desire for peace
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