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Monthly Archives: March 2013

US President Barack Obama has signed in a wave of steep spending cuts that will take $85bn (£56bn) from the US federal budget this year. The Sequester cuts were designed to be so fearful that they would force the warring Democratic and Republican parties into reaching a compromise between taxing...
THE 4,000 people of Fifa village in northwestern Jordan rely on seasonal agricultural work in the Jordan Valley, sheep-breeding, and cash and material assistance from the Social Development Ministry, but they and many others are being driven further into poverty. Rising fuel prices, an earlier rise in food prices, the...
SYRIAN President Bashar al-Assad has accused the UK government of bullying and hypocrisy in its bid to militarise the conflict in his country. In an interview with the Sunday Times newspaper, Assad declared: ‘Syria has been fighting adversaries and foes for two years; you cannot do that if you do...
THE Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has written to health minister Lord Howe expressing grave concern that the government is planning to privatise large sections of the NHS by stealth, in breach of previous promises to doctors to limit the role of the private sector. In the letter leaked to...
STERLING posted significant declines against the US dollar and euro yesterday as UK growth prospects sank. The pound was 1.5030 against the US dollar and 1.1528 against the euro in mid-morning trading. It continued to fall below 1.50 to the dollar, a ten-year record low. The news that UK manufacturing suffered...
WITH Congress adjourned for the weekend, US President Obama was holding last-minute talks with Republican and Democratic leaders at the White House yesterday evening in a desperate attempt to avoid having to sign in savage automatic budget cuts at midnight local time last night. This was after the Senate rejected...
THE Liberal Democrats have won the Eastleigh by-election, with the UK Independence Party pushing the Conservatives into third place, with Labour as also-rans. Mike Thornton (Liberal Democrat) got 13,342 votes, with Diane James (UKIP) on 11,571, Maria Hutchings (Conservative) on 10,559, and John O’Farrell (Labour) on 4,088. This was in...
AMERICAN farmworkers are to launch a two-week, 200-mile ‘March for Rights, Respect, and Fair Food’ calling on Publix supermarket to accept historic human rights advances in Florida tomato fields. The march is to highlight farm labour reforms under way thanks to the Fair Food Programme, and Publix’s unconscionable decision to...
NUT and NASUWT members at Alec Reed Academy in Northolt, Ealing, west London were on strike yesterday, with two more days of strike action planned for next week, then three days the week after. The dispute is an escalation of the joint-union action short of strike action, caused by...
‘TRANSPORT for London – do the right thing!’ shouted striking London Overground Travel Safe security workers lobbying TfL head office in Victoria yesterday. ‘What do we want – contracts! job security! dignity!’ the RMT strikers chanted. Travel Safe RMT rep Adnan Hanif told News Line: ‘We’re here to protest because we...
WHATEVER the outcome of yesterday’s by-election in Eastleigh, it spells disaster for the Tory-led coalition government. Should the LibDems scrape a win over the Tories then it will be a crisis for the Cameron leadership. Should the Tories not just lose but come third behind the right-wing UKIP then the knives...