International
UK faces travel chaos as unions warn strikes could continue “indefinitely’
The UK’s rail network is once again in complete chaos due to fresh strikes that began Thursday, with union bosses warning the dispute could continue “indefinitely” unless their demands are met.
Thousands of workers across the UK kicked off a four-day strike due to long-running disputes over working conditions and unfair pay.
Commuters across the country, including the capital London, have been advised not to travel unless absolutely necessary.
Workers taking part in the industrial action are largely from Network Rail, Transport for London, London Buses and other transport services and are members of a number of unions.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union, accused the government of pursuing a “deliberate policy of prolonging rail disputes for political reasons.”
In a letter to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, he said the government was using “taxpayers’ money to bail out private train companies,” having doled out over £120 million ($143 million) so far, according to the union’s calculation.
“Using taxpayers’ money to satisfy the anti-union agenda of the Tory party and seek to break the trade unions is shameful and means the dispute will be prolonged indefinitely as the train companies don’t lose a penny as a result of the industrial action and therefore have no incentive to settle the disputes,” said Lynch.
“At the moment, the only way we’ve ever achieved anything as a union is by the withdrawal of our labor. That’s the only way that a working person has any strength is by collective bargaining and collective use of our ability to withdraw our labor,” said Chris Mortimer, the RMT union representative for Kings Cross.
“We don’t have the big money that comes due. And the only thing we have as individuals is the right to say we will not work under these conditions. The right to withdraw labor is from fundamental parts of being a member of the union,” he added.
NORTH LONDON: Tube trains stand at Northfields Train Depot as train strikes hit services again
Earlier, the RMT head said Network Rail had “not made any improvement on their previous pay offer and the train operating companies have not offered us anything new.”
He said officials were holding “secret negotiations with the government about cutting costs by slashing jobs and undermining working conditions and pensions.”
“Network Rail is also threatening to impose compulsory redundancies and unsafe 50% cuts to maintenance work if we did not withdraw strike action. The train operating companies have put driver-only operations on the table along with ransacking our members’ terms and conditions,” he added.
In addition to Thursday’s industrial action, members of the RMT and Unite unions will walk out of London Underground tube stations and bus depots Friday in a separate dispute over pay.
On Saturday, railway workers including train drivers, conductors and platform staff, alongside members from the London United bus routes, will stage a walkout that will further disrupt travel plans for many on the weekend.
Shapps has condemned the mass industrial action and blamed its participants for causing unnecessary disruptions to millions of commuters who rely on transport services to go to work and visit family and friends.
“It’s clear, from their coordinated approach that the unions are hell-bent on causing as much misery as possible to the very same taxpayers who stumped up £600 ($716) per household to ensure not a single rail worker lost their job during the (coronavirus) pandemic,” he said.
“Sadly, union chiefs have short memories and will be repaying this act of good faith by ruining millions of hard-working people’s summer plans. Businesses too will suffer, with the capital’s leisure and tourism sectors, which have been banking on that summer trade, set to lose millions – a particularly cruel blow, given how hard many worked to stay afloat during successive summers of lockdown,” he added.
Unions leading the mass strike, however, argue that their workers are being severely affected by the cost-of-living crisis, with inflation reaching a 40-year high of 10% and real wages seeing a sharp drop.
In June, a mass walkout by members of the RMT union caused one of the UK’s largest rail strikes in 30 years. (Anadolu Agency)
Changpeng Zhao, the former chief executive of Binance, was sentenced on Tuesday to four months in prison after pleading guilty to violating U.S. laws against money laundering at the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
Zhao, who went by the nickname CZ, has also satisfied the requirement of him to pay $50 million in fines, U.S. District Judge Richard Jones said in court Tuesday.
The judge also won’t impose five months of probation as was recommended by the probation officer, Mail Online reports.
The 47-year-old admitted to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by willfully failing to set up an effective anti-money laundering system at Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange he founded and ran as CEO from July 2017 to November 2023.
Binance also pleaded guilty to similar charges from the US Department of Justice in November 2023 and was forced to pay $4.3 billion in fines and restitution for failing to register as a money transmitting business, Forbes reported.
U.S. prosecutors had urged the court to sentence Zhao to three years in prison after he pleaded guilty to violating laws against money laundering.
They argued that sentencing Zhao to twice the maximum 18 months recommended under federal guidelines would reflect the magnitude of his willful violations, and send a message that would deter others.
A U.S. district court had in March ordered that Zhao must surrender his Canadian passport and notify the court before travelling within the country.
This came after U.S. District Judge, Honorable Richard A. Jones restricted his bond conditions.
The court ordered the businessman to surrender all valid and expired passports, and the documents were to be transferred to someone to be hired by his lawyers who would accompany the Binance founder on all trips where a passport might be needed.
He must also notify the relevant authorities of his movements.
In the case between the U.S. and Zhao as the defendant, the court ruling of March 11, 2024, obtained by SaharaReporters, is as follows: “Defendant must remain in the continental United States through the imposition of sentence.
“Defendant must notify Pretrial Services before any travel within the continental United States.
“Defendant must surrender his current Canadian passport to a third-party custodian employed and supervised by his counsel of record.
“The third-party custodian must retain control over that Canadian passport and must accompany Defendant on any travel that requires identification documents.
“Defendant must surrender all other current and expired passports and travel documents to his counsel of record, who may return those documents to defendant only with authorization from Pretrial Services or the Court.
“Defendant may not apply for or obtain a new passport or travel document from any country without the Court’s permission.”
In November 2023, Zhao pleaded guilty to criminal charges and violating the Bank Secrecy Act. He subsequently agreed to pay a fine and stepped down as the company’s CEO.
Zhao was released on bail of $175 million.
This was part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice, according to court documents.
The plea arrangement with the government followed years of investigation into the dealings of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
In December, Judge Jones barred Zhao from leaving the U.S. pending a verdict in his case.
In February, the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Olayemi Cardoso, said $26 billion passed through Binance Nigeria from unknown sources and users in one year.
The allegation came amid the free fall of the naira and clampdown on Bureaux de Change by President Bola Tinubu’s administration in an attempt to steady the rapid decline of Nigeria’s currency, naira.
Cardoso said the government was “concerned that certain practices go on that indicate illicit flows going through a number of these entities, and suspicious flows at best”.
The Nigerian government later arrested two Binance executives for alleged money laundering – Tigran Gambaryan, a U.S. citizen and Binance’s head of financial crime compliance, and Nadeem Anjarwalla, a British-Kenyan who is African regional manager for the cryptocurrency trading firm.
Anjarwalla later escaped from detention and fled to Kenya. Meanwhile, their trial has commenced in a Federal High Court in Abuja.
International
Veteran BBC journalist Stephen Grimason who broke news of the historic Good Friday Agreement in 1998 dies aged 67
- Stephen Grimason died following a long battle with cancer
- He left the BBC to become Stormont’s director of communications until 2016
The veteran BBC journalist Stephen Grimason who broke news of the historic Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 has died aged 67.
The former BBC Northern Ireland political editor passed away following a long-term battle with cancer.
Following his iconic three-decade-long career in journalism, Grimason, originally from Lurgan, Co Armagh, later went on to work for the Stormont administration as director of communications.
He spoke publicly over the last year about his fight against cancer and said he received well wishes from former Prime Minister Tony Blair among others.
In an interview in January when he, along with former UTV political editor Ken Reid, was honoured with the Chancellor’s Medal for services to journalism, he described leaving it as ‘a bit of a wrench’, recalling ‘being surrounded by tremendous people’.
• The icon is widely remembered for breaking the news of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998 and reporting on The Troubles
Looking back, he said he had a ‘seat at the table for an awful lot of pretty dramatic Executive meetings’ in the 2000s.
Grimason cut his teeth working in local newspapers including the Lurgan Mail, the Ulster Star in Lisburn and Banbridge Chronicle, as well as regional papers, the former Sunday News newspapers and the News Letter.
At just 27-years-old, Grimason had become the editor of the Banbridge Chronicle.
Later, after 12 years in newspaper journalism, he applied for a job at the BBC in Northern Ireland.
‘There were something like 300 of us (who applied) and two of us got jobs – so I must have bluffed my way rightly,’ he said of that time.
Speaking in January at Queen’s University around the then political stalemate, Grimason noted the ‘tide of Irish and Northern Irish politics goes in and out’, adding: ‘If you’re not careful and you don’t lead, you’ll be left on the beach.’
He also spoke of covering some of the darkest days of the Troubles, including atrocities within days in January 1992 – an IRA bomb which killed eight construction workers at Teebane, Co Tyrone, and the killing of five people by loyalists at the Sean Graham bookmakers on the Ormeau Road in Belfast.
‘I was the first reporter at Teebane. In the end, I think that the big success of the peace process was that actually peace, or an imperfect version of it, did win through,’ he said.
When Grimason memorably broke the news of the peace deal which helped end the troubles, he declared on television: ‘I have it in my hand’.
• Former UTV political editor Ken Reid (left) and former BBC Northern Ireland political editor Stephen Grimason (right) at the Queen’s University in Belfast where they were honoured with the Chancellor’s Medal for services to journalism
• Ken Reid (left) and Stephen Grimason (right) at Queen’s University in Belfast
Grimason was described as a ‘brilliant political editor’ by former Northern Ireland presenter Noel Thompson, BBC reported.
‘He had the two most important attributes for the job. He loved the gossip – the inside track – and he loved to share it with the rest of us,’ he said.
‘His biggest scoop was of course getting hold of a copy of the Good Friday Agreement before any of the hundreds of other journalists camped out at Stormont.
”I have it in my hand’ he told me live on air, with justifiable pride and excitement. It’s one of the key journalistic moments of the last 30 or 40 years.’
Grimason left the BBC to become Stormont’s new director of communications, a role he held until 2016.
He suffered heartache in 2022, when his younger brother Darryl, who was also a BBC journalist ad presenter, passed away.
Adam Smyth, director of BBC Northern Ireland, also paid tribute to Grimason following his shock death.
He said: ‘Stephen Grimason possessed the special talents that only the very best editors and correspondents exhibit – the audience always came away from his broadcasts feeling they knew and understood the political landscape better, and they trusted what he had to say.
‘Stephen’s list of contacts and sources was so extensive he regularly seemed to be one step ahead of everyone else – including the politicians.
‘His contribution to BBC Northern Ireland is deeply appreciated and we offer our sincerest condolences to Stephen’s family.’
Ken Reid wrote on X, formerly Twitter: ‘Stephen Grimason, my dear friend, has died.
‘He showed enormous courage against the odds right to very end. In over 40 years of friendship and rivalry we never exchanged a cross word.
‘Lucky to have spent time with him in his last days. Sleep well my friend’.
Outside of work, Grimason was reportedly an avid golfer and a keen rugby and football fan, and passionate about Chelsea FC. (Daily Mail)
Majaliwa warned that the rains might continue into May, and urged families to leave flood-prone areas.
About 200,000 people and more than 51,000 households were already affected by the disaster, he added.
Heavy rains have also swept through neighbouring Kenya and Burundi, causing a humanitarian crisis in the region.
Giving a report to Tanzania’s parliament on the situation in his country since January, Mr Majaliwa said that in addition to the 155 people killed, 236 had been injured.
“The heavy El Nino rains, accompanied by strong winds, floods, and landslides in various parts of the country, have caused significant damage.
“These include loss of life, destruction of crops, homes, citizens’ property, and infrastructure such as roads, bridges, and railways,” he added.
A resident in northern Tanzania’s Siha district told the BBC that his home had been destroyed.
“I have nothing left, everything has been wiped away,” he said.
In Kenya, President William Ruto has ordered the army to help with rescue operations, as heavy rains pounded large parts of the country, including the capital, Nairobi, where homes in some slum areas have been swept away, along with furniture and other goods.
More than 10 have died in Kenya this week, bringing the death to at least 45 people since March, the Red Cross said.
In Burundi, heavy rains have displaced nearly 100,000 peoples.
BBC Weather’s Chris Fawkes says that one of the biggest drivers of the rains is the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD).
The IOD – often called the “Indian Niño” because of its similarity to its Pacific equivalent – refers to the difference in sea-surface temperatures in opposite parts of the Indian Ocean.
During a positive phase, the waters in the western Indian Ocean are much warmer than normal and this can bring heavier rain regardless of El Niño.
However, when both a positive IOD and an El Niño occur at the same time, as was the case last year, the rains in East Africa can become extreme.
One of the strongest positive IOD patterns on record coincided with one of the strongest El Niño patterns in 1997 and 1998, with severe flooding reported. These caused more than 6,000 deaths in five countries in the region. (BBC)
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