National News
Ring of Firefighters
by New Worker correspondent
ON MONDAY the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) headquarters announced the results of a UK-wide strike ballot that had opened on the 5th December. The result was overwhelming, with 88 per cent voting for action on a 73 per turnout from the 30,000 members. In two related ballots, firefighters in Northern Ireland voted 94 per cent for action and control room staff in the North West of England also voted heavily for action.
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In the Civil Service
by New Worker correspondent
ANOTHER UNION stirring into life is the high-caste civil service union Prospect, which has opened a formal ballot amongst its members in the civil service and agencies in opposition to the ‘cap’ of three per cent on pay offers.
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…and finally
by New Worker correspondent
JOURNALISTS on BBC local radio stations belonging to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) are balloting for industrial action in protest at the job cuts that will result from plans to share programmes with neighbouring regions after 2pm. It is also planned to have news bulletins pre-recorded rather than delivered live. Jobs will be lost and existing journalists will have to re-apply for their own jobs.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
SCOTTISH newspapers have recently been dominated by sex scandals that would have kept the News of the World going for years in the old days.
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Free all Ukrainian political prisoners!
by Theo Russell
LONDON comrades returned to Whitehall on Saturday to bring the crimes of the Ukrainian government to the attention of the British people. Some 30 protesters joined the picket opposite Downing Street organised by the International Ukraine Anti-Fascist Solidarity (IUAFS) campaign, to let the people “know that the regime in Ukraine, to which the British Government has given billions of pounds in financial and military support, has been committing horrific crimes against its own people, including Russian speakers, opposition activists and campaigners, journalists and Roma people, under the cover of accusing them of treason”.
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SOS – NHS!
by New Worker correspondent
LAST Saturday several hundred people assembled at Southampton’s historic Bargate in support of the National Health Service.
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Free Julian Assange!
by Ed Newman
AS JULIAN Assange awaits the final appeal of his looming extradition to the USA whilst languishing behind bars in London’s notorious Belmarsh Prison, leading left luminaries and free press advocates gathered in Washington DC on Friday 20th January, for the fourth sitting of the Belmarsh Tribunal, where they called on US President Joe Biden to drop all charges against the WikiLeaks publisher
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International News
Is Ronaldo’s Saudi switch really a ‘symbol of Chinese decline’?
by Hua Yun
SOME WESTERN media outlets have once again demonstrated their bias towards China and their willingness to show China’s “decline” or “incompetence” with whatever is at hand, no matter how irrelevant it is to China.
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Justice for Tyre Nichols!
Workers World (USA)
TYRE NICHOLS, a 29-year-old Black man in Memphis, Tennessee, was brutally beaten by Memphis police. Pulled over two minutes away from his house on 7th January, he was beaten so severely that he succumbed to his injuries three days later.
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China condemns America over Ukraine
Global Times
THE USA is the biggest instigator of the Ukraine crisis, but instead of reflecting on its behaviour, it blames China over groundless suspicions, the Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday, refuting American accusations that Chinese companies may be providing non-lethal military and economic assistance to Russia. The Foreign Ministry stressed that China won’t accept such groundless blackmail.
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Millions rage against Macron’s pension plan
Xinhua
MORE THAN 2.8 million people took to the streets across France on Tuesday, to express their anger against the controversial reform that will force employees to work until they are 64.
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Palestinian prisoners on
new hunger strike
Radio Havana Cuba
AT LEAST 120 Palestinian inmates in an Israeli jail have begun an open-ended hunger strike in protest against the Zionist regime’s repressive measures.
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America: the culture of violence
by Maria Josefina Arce
2023 is not off to a good start for the USA. Police brutality and deaths by firearms have marked the first month of the year in America, where events of this nature have become part of daily life.
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Features
The Soviet heroes who liberated Auschwitz
by Scott Ritter
AT ITS height, in the summer of 1944, the Auschwitz complex, which comprised three basic camps – the main camp, Birkenau and Monowitz – and another 40 sub-camps, housed over 105,000 registered prisoners, mostly Jews, and around 30,000 unregistered Jewish inmates of the so-called transit camps.
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Amílcar Cabral murdered by agents of Portuguese colonialism
by Carlos Lopes Pereira
HALF A CENTURY ago, on 20th January 1973, Amílcar Cabral, a prominent leader of the national liberation movement, was assassinated in Conakry, Guinea, by agents of colonialism on behalf of the fascist government of Portugal.
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