National News
Mean MPs prepare to return to Westminster for more rows over Brexit
by Mu Xuequan
THERESA May says she will not be forced into watering down the blueprint she published outlining Britain’s plans for a new trade deal after it leaves the European Union (EU).
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Jersey nurses threaten strike
by New Worker correspondent
IN THE Channel Islands, Unite the union has described a pay offer made to their nursing members working in Jersey as wholly inadequate.
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On the rails
by New Worker correspondent
DRIVING old steam trains and blowing whistles at the weekends on the platforms country railway stations owned by railway preservation societies are popular hobbies. Grand Central, which runs services on the East Coast main line from Sunderland and Bradford to King’s Cross, is also seeking volunteers to work for nothing.
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The fat of the land
by New Worker correspondent
IN A PAPER, published last week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), it reported that the UK’s net worth rose by £492 billion (5.1 per cent) in 2016 to £10.2 trillion with the rise mainly due to a £610 billion increase in the value of non-financial assets such as land.
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Guarding the guardians?
by New Worker correspondent
PCS, the civil service union, has won a 2.5-year battle against privatising the Ministry of Defence Guard Service (MGS). They are responsible for guarding more than 100 sites across Britain. The union has convinced the Government that there is absolutely no justification or logic to privatise it, based on either cost or risk. Amongst other duties, the 2,000 strong MGS ensures access control, dog patrols, CCTV management and fire marshals, and prevents thieves from stealing tanks and setting up a private army.
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Salmondistas versus Sturgeonites
by our Scottish Political correspondent
“NASTY, vindictive and deliberate” was how Dave Penman, general secretary of the mandarins trade union, the first Division Association, described former first Minister’s Alex Salmond over his response to allegations of sexual harassment.
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Queen’s Speech
by our Scottish Political correspondent
WHAT might be taken as the Scottish Queen’s Speech took place on Tuesday afternoon when Holyrood returned from its two month summer break.
The occasion lacked something of the pomp of Westminster, as it was given directly by Nicola Sturgeon.
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British school kids enjoy Qigong
by Zhang Dailei
DRESSED in bright yellow uniforms, 14 children from England’s fibbersley Park Academy were performing Baduanjin, the ancient movements of Chinese Qigong, together with nearly 300 adult competitors at the opening ceremony of the third European Health Qigong Games (EHQG).
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BlacKkKlansman
film review
by Ben Soton
BlacKkKlansman (2018). Director: Spike Lee. Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, Laura Harrier and Topher Grace. Certificate 15; 135 mins.
BlacKkKlansman is Director Spike Lee’s latest work based on the memoirs of Ron Stallworth, who in 1979 was the first Black American to join the Colorado Springs Police Department. Initially he is asked to infiltrate the Black Power movement, which was active amongst Black Students in the city.
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Who guards the guardians?
TV review
by New Worker TV correspondent
THIS SUNDAY night political thriller Bodyguard, BBC One), centres around the relationship between Home Secretary Julia Montague played by Keeley Hawes (Tipping the Velvet, Spooks, Ashes to Ashes, The Durrells) and her bodyguard, David Budd played by Richard Madden (Game of Thrones, Birdsong). Montague, an authoritarian figure with a possible hidden agenda, is loosely based around the disgraced former Tory Home Secretary Amber Rudd, whilst Budd is an Afghan veteran war with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). After Budd foils a terrorist attack on Montague in the middle of Whitehall their relationship becomes sexual.
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International News
Syrian defences fend off Israeli warplanes
by our Arab Affairs correspondent
SYRIAN air defence downed five Israeli missiles and forced Israeli warplanes to flee during a Zionist raid on targets in the Hama countryside on Tuesday. A civilian was martyred and four others injured in the raid which the Syrian say was an Israeli attempt to “raise the morale of the terrorists who are losing the war” ahead of an impending operation in Idlib.
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Donbas leader killed
by Greg Butterfield
ALEXANDER Zakharchenko, prime minister of the anti-fascist Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), was assassinated on 31st August when an explosion ripped through the Separ restaurant in the capital city of Donetsk.
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China Africa to start new journey of solidarity and cooperation
by Zhong Sheng
THE 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) began on Monday. Chinese President Xi Jinping will announce new measures of China-Africa practical cooperation at the meeting attended by a large number of foreign leaders.
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Features
The strange silence of Sergei Skripal
by Neil Clark
“‘IS THERE any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident,” remarked Sherlock Holmes.
That famous exchange between Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr Watson in the classic Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short story Silver Blaze springs readily to mind when one considers the strange silence of Sergei Skripal.
Last week, the Times newspaper reported that the British authorities had rejected a claim by Sergei Skripal’s niece that the former Russian double agent, who was poisoned with nerve agent in Salisbury on 4th March, could already be dead.
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Revolution the dawn of dignity
by Leidys María Labrador
WHEN I WAS six or seven years old, I had a beautiful but naïve idea. I liked to think that every morning as I got up to go to school, children everywhere around the world were doing the same thing. Back then, I never imagined that what was for me a normal, daily routine was only a utopia for millions of children, an unreachable dream. Whilst I felt only the pleasant weight of books in my backpack, they endured hunger, misery and desperation.
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Legendary Soviet singer Joseph Kobzon dies
Pravda.ru
JOSEPH KOBZON, a legendary Soviet and Russian singer and the voice of several generations, died on 30th August in Moscow. On 27th July it was reported that Joseph Kobzon was connected to the assisted breathing machine. Before he died he had been transferred to the intensive care unit in the department of neurosurgery in one of Moscow hospitals. Kobzon was diagnosed with cancer in 2005.
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Oliver Cromwell: 1599—1658
OLIVER CROMWELL, the leader of the bourgeois English Revolution, died on 3rd September 1658. Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon, was the leading Parliamentary commander during the English Civil War, which began in 1642 and ended in 1649 with the trial and execution of Charles Stuart and the abolition of the monarchy. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was usually styled in English, was proclaimed soon after.
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