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Saturday, May 9, 2009

Corus Group, the world’s fifth largest steel producer, announced on Friday that it may be forced to mothball its steelworks in Redcar, England. This move would threaten the jobs of the works’ 1,920 employees.

Corus may be forced to close its Teesside operations as a consortium has refused to honour a 10-year contract with Corus’ Teesside Cast Products, which accounted for 78% of the plant’s operations. Corus’ chief executive, Kirby Adams, said he was “extremely disappointed that the consortium members have seen fit to take this irresponsible action.”

Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, said “it is essential that Corus does everything it can legally, and with the government’s assistance, to reinstate the agreement”. Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, shared this view saying, “We are doing everything in our power to ensure that the contract is upheld.” Mandelson also said “we are not prepared to reconcile ourselves to the inevitable closure of this plant”.

The leader of Redcar & Cleveland Borough Council, Councillor George Dunning, said “Today is like being hit by a mini earthquake compared to what’s happened in the past.”

Martin Callanan and Stephen Hughes, Tory, and Labour MEPs for North East England, supported the idea that the government should subsidise wages in the plant on a temporary basis. Hughes and Fiona Hall, Lib Dem MEP, suggested that the government should apply to the EU’s Globalisation Adjustment Fund. Hall said “if the worst comes to the worst and jobs are indeed lost, I trust the Government will change its mind and support an application to the European Globalisation Fund in order to fund skills training for those who have lost their jobs.”

This move could “bring to an end a fine heritage of steelmaking at Teesside”, according to Adams. Steelworks in Teesside, which previously belonged to British Steel and Dorman Long, produced steel for famous structures like the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Corus had said it was likely there would be a “very significant number of redundancies” and a 90-day consultation period is due to begin.

Corus’ owner, Tata Steel, are also facing difficulties with another UK operation, automobile company Jaguar Land Rover.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Two powerful suicide attacks struck different areas of northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, apparently targeting the country’s security forces. In the first attack, a bomber killed at least six people and wounded more than 60 others outside a police station in Bannu.

Shortly thereafter, in Peshawar’s commercial district, another attacker blew himself up outside a bank affiliated with the Pakistani army, killing ten people and wounding more than 70 others.

Authorities in Bannu said the suicide bomber exploded a small truck full of explosives, destroying the police station and surrounding buildings.

District Police Officer Iqbal Marwat said nearby civilians were wounded, but most of the casualties were police officers. He said the attacker tried to ram the vehicle through the main gate, but then detonated the bomb after police opened fire.

Local media are quoted a representative for the outlawed Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan as taking responsibility for the bombing.

In a telephone call, Taliban spokesman Qari Hussain Mehsud warned civilians to keep away from security checkpoints and other police installations, saying that “we have broken the silence as the government did not understand the pause in attacks, and from now there will be an increase in the number of suicide bombings.”

This is the first time the alliance of more than a dozen militant groups with links to al-Qaida has claimed responsibility since its former leader Baitullah Mehsud was reportedly killed in a U.S. missile strike. Analysts had suggested the group was in disarray following Mehsud’s death.

Hours later in Peshawar, officials say an attacker in a parked car threw a grenade at a crowd of people outside the Askari Bank before detonating a bomb in his car.

“Ten people have been killed and 71 wounded, five of them critically,” said the chief government administrator of Peshawar, Sahibzada Anis, to the Reuters news agency.

“It was terrible. My children are very frightened. All the windows of my house are broken. It was very frightening,” said Beenish Asad, a witness to the event, who lives near where the explosion took place.

No one has claimed responsibility for that particular attack. Senior police official Ghafoor Afridi told Voice of America that the bomber had managed to bypass multiple security checkpoints. “There was checking all around. But somehow, it is not possible to check all vehicles, so they might have slipped a vehicle inside and exploded it,” said Afridi.

North West Frontier Province’s information minister, Mian Iftikhar Hussain, said that the recent violence would not discourage government forces from fighting the rebels. “It is not only our duty […] to fight this menace of terrorism, it is a responsibility of the whole world. We are on the front line today, that’s why our blood is being shed.”

Hussain also said “we are not scared of these people and we have to extend our operations wherever these terrorists are operating,” adding that forty suspected would-be suicide bombers had been apprehended within the past several months.

The U.S. Embassy in Pakistan released a statement in which it condemned the bombings. “[The attacks] highlight the vicious and inhuman nature of this enemy whose true target is the democratically elected government of Pakistan and the security of all Pakistanis,” the embassy said.

Saturday’s attacks come as the Pakistani military works to expand its offensive against the Taliban from in and around Swat Valley to the north to South Waziristan.

Wednesday, March 29, 2006 Local Government workers in the UK withdrew their labour yesterday as part of a dispute over pension entitlements. The members of 11 different trades unions were involved in the 24hr strike. As the day began they declared that support for the strike was solid. Although the strikers work for local councils, their pay and conditions are agreed nationally. The Local Government Association which represents the local councils in England and Wales declared predictions that 1.5 million people would stay away from work as “wildly optimistic”.

The Unions’ complaint is that local government workers are being treated unfavourably compared to other public sector employees. They say that agreements on pensions that have been reached with civil servants, teachers and health workers will allow those staff to continue to retire at 60 while local government staff will be forced to work until they are 65. Civil servants work for national government, teachers work for local councils but have their own pension arrangements and most health workers are employed by the state-controlled National Health Service.

The Local Government Association claims that if council workers continue to be able to retire at 60, it will increase the levels of Council Tax (a tax on people living in properties which funds a proportion of local government expenditure) by 2%.

The striking workers provide a wide range of services from assisting teachers in the class room, through inspecting kitchens for hygiene to provising care to the vulnerable in society. In some places council workers collect tolls for road tunnels or manage ferries. Mainstream media have reported on the strike all day with heavy coverage of disruption to commuters where transport has been affected. The unions have emphasised the large number of their members who are women working in low paid jobs.

The Government which regulates the scheme claimed that the early retirement provisions (called the rule of 85) were age-discriminatory and had to be removed.

The strike ended at midnight. The Unions have not declared any further strike days.

The Unions involved were AEP, AMICUS, CYWU, GMB, NAPO, NIPSA, NUJ, NUT, TGWU, UCATT and UNISON.

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• “Unison Pensions Campaign” — Unison, 28 March 2006
• “Pensions strike bites across UK” — BBC, 28 March 2006
• LGA Media Office. “Union demands for pension scheme will cost council taxpayers more than 2% extra a year” — Local Government Association, 28 March 2006
• “ODPM STATEMENT ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT PENSIONS” — Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 28 March 2006
• “Unions fighting together to protect our pensions” — Joint Union Strike Team, 28 March 2006

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Police have said that an explosion in a hotel garage in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, that sparked an evacuation of a large area was an act of vandalism. What was initially thought to be an explosion, at around 7:30am local time, forced police to shut off a major entrance into the area prompted the Clarion Inn, a two-story hotel, and surrounding buildings to be evacuated. A bomb squad were called to the scene, and an armored robot was sent into the garage to examine the scene.

Los Angeles Police Department Lieutenant John Romero said that investigators were treating the incident as an act of vandalism, and said that detectives will be examining surveillance footage of the garage. He confirmed that a caller had reported an explosion in the area. Officers who responded did not initially find anything suspicious, but a short time later a Port Police officer on patrol discovered a Lincoln Navigator with its windows blown out in an underground garage. The Los Angeles Fire Department also responded to the call.

“On closer inspection and using their training, bomb squad is confident the damage was caused by something other than a bomb. Based on what we know now, they’re scaling the operation way back,” he said. “There’s any variety of things that can sound like a bomb or a blast, particularly in a subterranean environment. The danger has passed.” He refused to speculate as to what may have caused the damage, or, if it was not a bomb, where the noise had come from. He added: “Now that the robots have gone forward and had a good look, we are confidant there was not an explosion. There was a hole blown in the door, and the glass was blown out so, now we have to find out who did it.”

A witness, the owner of a diner two blocks away from the hotel, said that he heard a loud sound while preparing the day’s menu. He said: “I was cooking my food and I heard something like ‘boom’! I said, ‘What happened?’ And I checked everything in the kitchen but saw nothing. An hour later I went outside and saw a lot of police.” Romero added that the vehicle had shown signs of an explosion and that no one in the hotel was killed or injured. At 8:20 a.m. the police issued a citywide tactical alert and surrounding streets were closed to the public. Police have said that there is shattered glass surrounding the vehicle and one of the doors exhibits evidence that an explosion had taken place. Romero added: “We still want to be very careful how to proceed. Something did happen to the car. Now they have to figure out what happened and who did it.”

Monday, October 11, 2010

Wikinews interviewed author Amy Scobee about her book Scientology – Abuse at the Top, and asked her about her experiences working as an executive within the organization. Scobee joined the organization at age 14, and worked at Scientology’s international management headquarters for several years before leaving in 2005. She served as a Scientology executive in multiple high-ranking positions, working out of the international headquarters of Scientology known as “Gold Base”, located in Gilman Hot Springs near Hemet, California.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Serbian firefighters battling fires in the Kuršumlija area, near the administrative line with Kosovo have reportedly been shot at by Albanians from the Podujevo municipality in Kosovo. Since then, firefighters were denied access to the area.

“Firefighters heard automatic gunfire and temporarily withdrew from the area, while the fire began to spread nearer to the Kuršumlija villages,” a forestry engineer said.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Bruce Haines is running for the Green Party of Ontario in the Ontario provincial election, in the Bramalea-Gore-Malton riding. Wikinews’ Nick Moreau interviewed him regarding his values, his experience, and his campaign.

Stay tuned for further interviews; every candidate from every party is eligible, and will be contacted. Expect interviews from Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, New Democratic Party members, Ontario Greens, as well as members from the Family Coalition, Freedom, Communist, Libertarian, and Confederation of Regions parties, as well as independents.