LONDON: Tens of thousands of railway workers walked off the job in Britain on Tuesday, bringing the train network to a crawl in the country’s biggest transit strike for three decades — and a potential precursor to a summer of labor discontent.
About 40,000 cleaners, signalers, maintenance workers and station staff held a 24-hour strike, with two more planned for Thursday and Saturday. Compounding the pain for commuters, London Underground subway services were also hit by a walkout on Tuesday.
The dispute centers on pay, working conditions and job security as Britain’s railways struggle to adapt to travel and commuting habits changed — perhaps forever — by the coronavirus pandemic. With passenger numbers still not back to pre-pandemic levels but the government ending emergency support that kept the railways afloat, train companies are seeking to cut costs and staffing.
Sustained national strikes are uncommon in Britain these days, but unions have warned the country to brace for more as workers face the worst cost-of-living squeeze in more than a generation. Lawyers in England and Wales have announced they will walk out starting next week, while unions representing teachers and postal workers both plan to consult their members about possible actions.
Major railway stations were largely deserted on Tuesday, with only about 20 percent of passenger trains scheduled to run. Services will resume Wednesday, but lingering disruption means only about 60 percent of trains are due to run.
The strike upended the plans of employees trying to get to work, students heading for end-of-year exams and music-lovers making their way to the Glastonbury Festival, which starts Wednesday in southwest England.
Roads in London were more congested than usual as commuters turned to cars and taxis. But footfall was 27 percent lower than last Tuesday, according to retail analysts Springboard, as many people canceled trips or worked from home if they could.
Nurse manager Priya Govender was at London Bridge station Tuesday morning, struggling to get back to her home south of the city after spending the night in a hotel.
“I definitely will not be able to get a bus because they are packed. I will have to get an Uber,” she said. “My day has been horrible. It is going to be a long day, and I still have a full day’s work to do.” She planned to work from home, once she made it there.
The Center for Economics and Business Research consultancy said the three days of strikes could cost the economy at least 91 million pounds ($112 million).
Kate Nicholls, chief executive of industry body UKHospitality, said the walkout would cost restaurants, cafes and bars business that is sorely needed after two years of pandemic disruption, and “fragile consumer confidence will take a further hit.”
With inflation currently running at 9 percent, the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union says it cannot accept rail firms’ latest offer of a 3 percent raise.
But the train companies argue they can’t offer more, given current passenger numbers. There were almost 1 billion train journeys in the UK in the year to March — compared to 1.7 billion in the 12 months before the pandemic.
While the Conservative government says it’s not involved in the talks, the union notes that it plays a major role in the heavily regulated industry, including providing subsidies long before the pandemic, and argues it could give rail companies more flexibility to offer a substantial pay increase.
The government has warned that big raises will spark a wage-price spiral driving inflation even higher.
Electrical engineer Harry Charles said he supported the strikers — even though his normal 10-minute train journey to London Bridge took him 90 minutes by bus.
“Their money is not going up, and the cost of everything is rising,” he said. “The strike has caused a lot of hassle for people, but everyone wants be able to eat and be able to afford to put in a good day’s work.”
All sides are keeping an eye on public frustration, especially in the event of repeated disruptions, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson was quick to pin responsibility for the strike firmly on the unions.
He told his Cabinet on Tuesday that the strikes were “so wrong and so unnecessary,” and said “union barons” should sit down with bosses and come to a deal.
The government says it plans to change the law so that train companies will have to provide a minimum level of service during walkouts, if necessary by hiring contract workers to fill in for striking staff.
Johnson knows strikes can define, and sometimes defeat, a government. In the 1970s, a wave of walkouts against a backdrop of high inflation — culminating in the 1978-79 “Winter of Discontent,” when bodies went unburied and garbage piled up in the streets — helped topple Britain’s Labour government and bring Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to power.
Thatcher’s decade in office brought free-market reforms that curbed the power of trade unions and created a more flexible — and, for workers, more uncertain — economy. Britain has had relatively low numbers of strikes ever since. But that may change as the UK is hit with its highest inflation levels in decades.
Millions of people in Britain, like those across Europe, are seeing their cost of living soar, in part driven by Russia’s war in Ukraine that is squeezing supplies of energy and food staples, including wheat. Prices were already rising before the war, as the global economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic fueled strong consumer demand.
But Susan Millson from south London, who abandoned a train trip to see her sister south of the city, blamed both sides.
“I just think it’s outrageous that there is no give and take between the unions and the government,” she said. “No one is giving any leeway at the moment. It’s awful.”
UK rail strike strands commuters, pits workers against government
https://arab.news/vsuvu
UK rail strike strands commuters, pits workers against government
- About 40,000 cleaners, signalers, maintenance workers and station staff held a 24-hour strike
- Two more are planned for Thursday and Saturday
Venezuela crackdown helped avert ‘civil war’: attorney general
CARACAS: Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab defended the state’s crackdown on opposition supporters after disputed July elections, telling AFP the authorities’ actions helped avert a “civil war.”
The proclamation of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro as the winner of the July 28 election triggered widespread protests.
The opposition, which had been tipped by polls for an easy win, had published detailed polling-station-level results which showed its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia winning by a landslide.
Twenty-eight people, including two police officers, were killed and 200 injured in the unrest, during which around 2,400 people were arrested.
Saab claimed the violence that marred the protests had been “premeditated.”
“There was an attempt to trigger a civil war,” he said.
“The plan consisting in claiming there was fraud in order to generate a terrorist act. If we had not acted as we did at that moment Venezuela would have been gripped by civil war,” he told AFP in an interview Monday at his office in Caracas.
He denied the security forces had any responsibility for the deaths of demonstrators.
A September 4 report into the killings by Human Rights Watch (HRW) pointed the finger at Venezuelan security forces and pro-government militias known as “colectivos” in some of the deaths.
One of the victims was a 15-year-old boy, Isaias Jacob Fuenmayor Gonzalez, who sustained a gunshot to the neck while taking part in a protest in Maracaibo, Venezuela’s second-biggest city, according to HRW.
Saab, whose office walls are lined with portraits of Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, late Venezuelan socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez, his late Cuban ally Fidel Castro and Maduro, denied allegations his office was under Maduro’s thumb.
Appointed attorney general in 2017, he was re-elected to the position earlier this month by a parliament stacked with Maduro loyalists.
He cited among his achievements increased investment in community policing and 600 convictions handed down to police officers for human rights violations.
He also pointed to nearly 22,000 convictions for corruption under his watch and claimed to have dismantled “34 corruption systems” at graft-ridden state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela.
Five of the last eight oil ministers are in prison or fled the country.
Saab claimed that during the post-election violence “around 500” buildings, including schools, clinics and town halls were damaged by protesters.
He denied that those detained were political prisoners, accusing them of “trying to burn” and “shooting at” demonstrators, without providing any evidence of his claim.
“A political prisoner is someone who has been detained because of his political ideas and who uses peaceful tactics... These people took weapons to (try to) overthrow a legitimately constituted government,” he accused.
The opposition says many of those arrested were arbitrarily arrested.
Venezuela’s Foro Penal rights NGO says some 1,800 people remain behind bars over two months later, including 69 teenagers.
Saab denied that children were being held, but said that the law allowed for the arrest of minors aged between 14 and 17.
He refused to be drawn on how many protesters were still in custody, saying only that “many have been freed.”
And he denied claims by the families of some of the prisoners that their loved ones had been tortured.
Only a handful of countries, including Russia, have recognized Maduro’s claim to have won a third six-year term.
But opposition protests have largely petered out since September, when Gonzalez Urrutia went into exile in Spain after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Saab said the 75-year-old former diplomat would be “automatically detained” if he returned to Venezuela.
Saab also said that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who has been in hiding since the election, was under investigation but refused to say whether a warrant had been issued for her arrest.
US bans flights to Haiti as gang violence rages
PORT-AU-PRINCE: The United States on Tuesday banned all civilian flights to Haiti for a month, a day after a jetliner was shot at on approach to the capital and as a new prime minister took the reins of a nation ravaged by poverty and gang violence.
The US Federal Aviation Administration’s move came after a Spirit Airlines jetliner arriving from Florida in Port-au-Prince was hit by gunfire and had to reroute to the Dominican Republic.
Prime Minister Alix Didier Fils-Aime was sworn in on Monday, replacing outgoing premier Garry Conille, who was appointed in May but became embroiled in a power struggle with the country’s unelected transitional council.
On Tuesday, Haiti remained cut off from the rest of the world, with its main airport closed and bursts of gunfire ringing out in several neighborhoods of the capital.
Many stores and schools were shuttered as people feared more attacks by the powerful and well-armed gangs that control 80 percent of the city, even though a Kenyan-led international force has been deployed to help the outgunned Haitian police restore order.
Violent crime in the capital city remains high, with gang members routinely targeting civilians and robberies, rapes and kidnappings are rampant.
The attack on the Spirit Airlines aircraft saw one flight attendant suffer minor injuries. Images posted online appeared to show several bullet holes inside the plane.
The transitional council, aiming to put Haiti on a path to voting in 2026, had been tasked with stabilizing a country that has no president or parliament and last held elections in 2016.
The United States on Tuesday called on Haiti’s leaders to put personal interests aside and concentrate on getting the country back on its feet.
“The acute and immediate needs of the Haitian people mandate that the transitional government prioritize governance over the competing personal interests of political actors,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.
Haiti has not had a president since the assassination of Jovenel Moise in 2021.
The Caribbean nation has long struggled with political instability, poverty, natural disasters and gang violence.
But conditions sharply worsened at the end of February when armed groups launched coordinated attacks in the capital, saying they wanted to overthrow then-prime minister Ariel Henry.
Despite the arrival of the Kenyan-led support mission in June, violence has continued to soar.
A recent United Nations report said more than 1,200 people were killed in Haiti from July through September, with persistent kidnappings and sexual violence against women and girls.
The report said the gangs were digging trenches, using drones and stockpiling weapons as they change tactics to confront the Kenyan-led police force.
Gang leaders have strengthened defenses for the zones they control and placed gas cylinders and Molotov cocktail bombs ready to use against police operations.
Climate cash should also go to nuclear, says UN atomic chief
- International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said he wanted countries from Kenya to Malaysia to go for nuclear, while denying he was pushing for an “irresponsible race” toward civil atomic power
BAKU: The head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog said Tuesday that atomic power should also be allowed to tap into climate change funds.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said he wanted countries from Kenya to Malaysia to go for nuclear, while denying he was pushing for an “irresponsible race” toward civil atomic power.
“It should. Already at COP28 in Dubai the international community — not just nuclear countries — agreed that nuclear energy needs to be accelerated.
We need to give ourselves the means to make things happen.
The dialogue with international financial institutions has started in a very positive way. I was at the World Bank this summer, and tomorrow we will meet with the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development), as well as the Development Bank of Latin America.
Various financing bodies are beginning to see that markets are pushing in this direction.
We are obviously not a commercial lobby (but) a regulatory agency for everything related to nuclear safety, security, and non-proliferation. We are here to provide assurances and to oversee projects.”
“There are cultural, political and ideological barriers. We are coming out of decades of a negative narrative about nuclear, but it has to happen. I am the first to want to see results straight away.”
“That would be a very good thing. There are many countries — such as Ghana, Kenya and Morocco — that are interested in small modular reactors, for example, and they approach us saying, ‘For us, this would be a good solution.’
Others, like those in Eastern Europe, could benefit from European funding and for whom energy security is crucial in reducing dependency on certain suppliers. So it depends on the model. In Asia, we have Malaysia, the Philippines... countries that genuinely need this.”
“Obviously, the agency does not endorse or promote programs or projects that lack the institutional and technological fabric needed.
We have development models. The United Arab Emirates is a very, very interesting case. It’s a country with financial resources but that initially had absolutely no infrastructure, nuclear regulations etc.
We have established programs for newcomers to guide them step-by-step, through 19 chapters, until they establish nuclear capability.”
That’s what we have done. We are not going crazy, in an irresponsible race toward civil nuclear power. But there are a lot of things we can do.”
Pentagon secrets leaker Jack Teixeira set to be sentenced, could get up to 17 years in prison
- Prosecutors, though, countered that Teixeira does not suffer from an intellectual disability that prevents him from knowing right from wrong
BOSTON: A Massachusetts Air National Guard member who pleaded guilty to leaking highly classified military documents about the war in Ukraine is expected to be sentenced in federal court on Tuesday.
Prosecutors have argued that Jack Teixeira should be sentenced to 17 years in prison, saying he “perpetrated one of the most significant and consequential violations of the Espionage Act in American history.”
“As both a member of the United States Armed Forces and a clearance holder, the defendant took an oath to defend the United States and to protect its secrets — secrets that are vital to US national security and the physical safety of Americans serving overseas,” prosecutors wrote. “Teixeira violated his oath, almost every day, for over a year.”
Teixeira’s attorneys will argue that US District Judge Indira Talwani should sentence him to 11 years in prison. In their sentencing memorandum, they acknowledged that their client “made a terrible decision which he repeated over 14 months.”
“It’s a crime that deserves serious consequences,” the attorneys wrote. “Jack has thoroughly accepted responsibility for the wrongfulness of his actions and stands ready to accept whatever punishment must now be imposed.”
Teixeira, of North Dighton, Massachusetts, pleaded guilty in March to six counts of the willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. That came nearly a year after he was arrested in the most consequential national security leak in years.
The 22-year-old admitted that he illegally collected some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and shared them with other users on the social media platform Discord.
When Teixeira pleaded guilty, prosecutors said they would seek a prison term at the high end of the sentencing range. But the defense wrote that the 11 years is a “serious and adequate to account for deterrence considerations and would be essentially equal to half the life that Jack has lived thus far.”
His attorneys described Teixeira as an autistic, isolated individual who spent most of his time online, especially with his Discord community. They said his actions, though criminal, were never meant to “harm the United States.” He also had no prior criminal record.
“Instead, his intent was to educate his friends about world events to make certain they were not misled by misinformation,” the attorneys wrote. “To Jack, the Ukraine war was his generation’s World War II or Iraq, and he needed someone to share the experience with.”
Prosecutors, though, countered that Teixeira does not suffer from an intellectual disability that prevents him from knowing right from wrong. They argued that Teixeira’s post-arrest diagnosis as having “mild, high-functioning” autism “is of questionable relevance in these proceedings.”
The security breach raised alarm over America’s ability to protect its most closely guarded secrets and forced the Biden administration to scramble to try to contain the diplomatic and military fallout. The leaks embarrassed the Pentagon, which tightened controls to safeguard classified information and disciplined members found to have intentionally failed to take required action about Teixeira’s suspicious behavior.
Teixeira, who was part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, worked as a cyber transport systems specialist, which is essentially an information technology specialist responsible for military communications networks. He remains in the Air National Guard in an unpaid status, an Air Force official said.
Authorities said he first typed out classified documents he accessed and then began sharing photographs of files that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings. Prosecutors also said he tried to cover his tracks before his arrest, and authorities found a smashed tablet, laptop and an Xbox gaming console in a dumpster at his house.
The leak exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including information about troop movements in Ukraine, and the provision of supplies and equipment to Ukrainian troops. Teixeira also admitted posting information about a US adversary’s plans to harm US forces serving overseas.
Amsterdam warns of new calls for unrest after violence around Israeli match
- Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema pleaded with the Israeli ambassador for officials in Israel to make clear “that this is about a sporting event and should not be mixed with politics”
AMSTERDAM: A senior police officer warned Tuesday of calls for more rioting in Amsterdam, after dozens of people armed with sticks and firecrackers set a tram on fire Monday night and the city faces tensions following violence last week targeting fans of an Israeli soccer club.
Olivier Dutilh, of the Amsterdam police force, told a court hearing that “we have signals that there are calls for similar” unrest in the west of the city. Streets in the area were relatively calm as evening fell, and the security presence was low-profile.
The Amsterdam mayor, chief of police and top public prosecutor published a report Monday outlining what happened last week, including new details about actions by Maccabi Tel Aviv fans ahead of the Maccabi Tel Aviv-Ajax soccer match.
Local authorities had decided against banning the game, but beefed up security. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators were banned by local authorities from gathering outside the stadium.
The day before the game, authorities reported incidents and saw social media posts threatening Maccabi fans. Around midnight, Israeli fans ripped a Palestinian flag off a downtown building and several of them took off their belts and attacked a cab, the document said. Cab drivers sought to mobilize online in response, and centered on a casino where some 400 Israeli fans were gathered. Police mobilized to avoid a major confrontation.
The morning of the game, authorities were “specifically worried about the Maccabi fans and the reaction of cab drivers,” the document said. Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema pleaded with the Israeli ambassador for officials in Israel to make clear “that this is about a sporting event and should not be mixed with politics.”
In the afternoon, social media posts hardened and antisemitic terms were used. After the 5-0 win of Ajax over Maccabi, parts of a large group of Maccabi supporters “are running around with sticks destroying things,” the document said. There were also “rioters, moving in small groups, by foot, scooter or car, quickly attacking Maccabi fans before disappearing,” the City Hall timeline said.
The police commander said that those incidents had “an antisemitic character — there is talk about a Jew hunt and people are asked about their nationality.” Rumors then surfaced about missing people and hostage-taking, which proved unfounded.
Police said the fire Monday was quickly extinguished and riot officers cleared the square. Images online showed people damaging property and setting off firecrackers. A police vehicle was later burned out in a nearby street and police said they suspect arson.
Police said it wasn’t clear who started the unrest and whether it was related to what happened last week. Some rioters could be heard on video shared on social media using slurs against Jewish people.
Police said they detained three suspects and appealed for witnesses, including of the assault of a cyclist who was beaten up as he rode past the unrest.
Police noted the tense atmosphere in the city since five people were treated in the hospital and dozens detained Thursday following the soccer match. Youths on scooters and on foot went in search of Israeli fans, punching and kicking them and then fleeing to evade police, according to Amsterdam’s mayor.
Prime Minister Dick Schoof met Tuesday with members of Amsterdam’s Jewish community to discuss antisemitism in the wake of the violence. Reports of antisemitic speech, vandalism and violence have been on the rise in Europe since the start of the war in Gaza.
A total of eight people are in custody in the investigation into last week’s violence, between the ages of 16 and 37, from Amsterdam and nearby cities, according to police.
Police said they have identified over 170 witnesses and have taken forensics evidence from dozens. The prime minister said they were also examining videos posted to social media.
The mayor has banned all demonstrations in the city and declared several parts of Amsterdam risk zones where police can stop and check anyone. Dozens were detained on Sunday for taking part in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in central Amsterdam that had been outlawed.
A small demonstration was ended by police Tuesday outside Amsterdam City Hall during a debate about the unrest, Dutch broadcaster NOS reported.
