National News
Winners and losers in new Brexit deal on Ireland
by Ekaterina Blinova , Sputnik
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has struck a deal with the European Union bringing an end to a long-standing debate over the post-Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol. Does this deal mean Sunak's triumph?
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Hard Times
by New Worker correspondent
The Labour Research Department (LRD) has warned that as a result of inflation and the rest of the economic crisis, pensions are at risk.
The main trade body for pension providers, the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), has warned that many hard-pressed workers are cutting down or stopping their voluntary pension contributions.
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Scottish Political News
by our Scottish political affairs correspondent
Nicola Sturgeon’s bombshell resignation has now been followed by the departure of Deputy First Minister John Swinney, who announced this week that he will stand down as a Scottish Government minister after almost 16 years. The veteran national-ist led the party from 2000–2004 before serving in a variety of Cabinet positions fol-lowing the SNP breakthrough election victory in 2007.
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International News
Russia suspends nuclear arms pact
by Fan Anqi , Global Times
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the suspension of Russia’s participation in New START, the last remaining nuclear arms control pact with the USA, in his State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly on 21st February, a move that experts saw as an urgent call for a return to normalcy in its ties with the USA and a signal of intensified confrontation between Russia and NATO.
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Greece: An accident waiting to happen
by New Worker correspondent
Greek railway workers walked last week in a 24-hour protest strike that brought the national rail network and the Athens metro to a complete standstill. The strike was called to protest against the chronic neglect of Greece’s railways by successive governments that the workers rightly say was the ultimate cause of the catastrophic train crash on 28th February
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For real human rights
by Roberto Morejón , Radio Havana Cuba
Iraq War architect and former Trump National Security Advisor John Bolton has praised President Biden over the White House’s purported plans to send hundreds of troops to Taiwan, saying he was confident that “this is the right thing to do”.
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Israeli riot police turn on democracy protesters
by Ed Newman, Radio Havana Cuba
The Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah has strongly condemned the deadly Israeli raid on the city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank that claimed the lives of nearly a dozen Palestinians.
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Features
A British artist's journey through Beijing
by Kang Caiq , Beijing Review
Strolling through the hutongs, Beijing's network of traditional narrow alleyways, one can easily get lost in their unique history-laden atmosphere. Amongst the capital's thousands of old lanes, Shijia Hutong stands out for two reasons: its innate cultural value and the fact that it houses Beijing's first hutong museum.
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Taiwan: One country, two systems
by Lan Xinzhen , Beijing Review
When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, the Kuomintang regime, defeated in the War of Liberation, retreated from the mainland to the island of Taiwan, creating the division between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits
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Guantanamo Bay: Against the will of the Cuban people
by Pedro Ríoseco , Granma
On 16th February 1903, the then president of Cuba Tomás Estrada Palma betrayed the ideas of José Martí and the Cuban Revolutionary Party he helped to found by signing the cession of the Caimanera territory to the USA to establish a naval base against the national will.
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India’s Red Books Day
by Nitheesh Narayanan, Sudhanva Deshpande & Vijay Prashad ,People’s Democracy (India)
ONE hundred and seventy-five years ago, Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels celebrated the publication of the Communist Manifesto on 21st February 1848 and then watched as Europe’s peoples rose up against one monarchical system after another.
The text seemed to anticipate the Springtime of Nations, which included the attempt by the French people to redeem the promise of their 1789 Revolution, whose promise had been squashed by the restoration of the monarchy. “A spectre haunts Europe”, the {Manifesto} opens, and indeed the ghosts had appeared on the streets to dress themselves in republican ideas – and to some extent even socialist ideas (although the rest of the sentence in the Manifesto, “the spectre of communism”, was truer in theory at that time than in practice).
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