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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Lead story

Beirut rocked by blasts

by our Arab Affairs correspondent

TWO MASSIVE explosions rocked Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Tuesday evening – sending a wave of destruction across the port and the rest of the city, wrecking millions of apartments and homes. Over a hundred bodies have been recovered and at least 4,000 people have been treated for injuries in the blast, the explosive force of which was similar to a small atomic bomb. The huge second blast was heard all over Lebanon, parts of Syria and over 200 miles away, across the Mediterranean, in Cyprus.

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Aviation workers under attack

by New Worker correspondent

THE BRITISH Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) has won a battle to prevent British Airways cutting 1,255 pilot jobs and to fire and rehire remaining pilots on worse conditions – but at a very heavy price. 85 per cent of its members at BA have voted by 87 per cent to accept 270 job losses and a 20 per cent pay cut which will reduce to eight per cent over two years after which pay will gradually be restored. BALPA General Secretary Brian Strutton said: “Our members have made a pragmatic decision in the circumstances but the fact that we were unable to persuade BA to avoid all compulsory redundancies is bitterly disappointing”.

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Editorial

Summertime Blues

IT’S NOT been a good week for the Prime Minister. The latest opinion polls still put the Tories in the lead but the Labour leader is now near level-pegging with Boris Johnson on the personal approval ratings. Labour has joined the clamour calling for the former minister facing rape charges to be removed from the Tory party. Rumours abound about a future Tory leadership challenge from the ambitious new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and Sir Kier Starmer has taken a break from his anti-Corbynista witch-hunt to give the Government a month to fix the broken COVID-19 test-and-trace system.

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Banking on Biden

Meanwhile the Remainer camp is banking on Donald Trump’s defeat in the forthcoming US presidential elections. Johnson’s entire Brexit strategy has been based on replacing the Treaty of Rome with a new ‘Treaty of Washington’ that would open the British domestic market, including the NHS, to corporate America in exchange for preferential trans-Atlantic trade.

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