All View News

Union officials have reacted with fury to Wilko’s announcement that the retailer is shutting 15 stores this year.

GMB union called the move, which threatens 330 jobs in Britain, ’another nail in the High Street’s coffin’.

Wilko, which admitted the way people shop is ‘changing’, was hammered by the pandemic despite being allowed to open as an ‘essential retailer’.

For the year to February 2021, it made a pre-tax profit of £4.4million — down 61.4 per cent year-on-year.

The firm said the branches will close when their leases end after favourable terms could not be agreed. It has more than 400 branches across the UK and is investing heavily in online retail.

Planned closures include Shipley, Bournemouth and Stockton next month, Scunthorpe in March, Grantham and Redditch in May, Rotherham, Skegness and Sutton Coldfield in June, Llanelli in August, Merthyr Tydfil in September and Cleethorpes in October. Orpington and Edmonton Green in London will also shut.

Roger Jenkins, GMB national officer, thundered: ‘These closures are devastating for Wilko workers and the communities who use them.

‘It’s yet another nail in the High Street’s coffin and GMB calls on councils and landlords to review commercial leases and offer lower rents.

Read More: Anger as Wilko reveals it will shut FIFTEEN stores this year putting 330 jobs at risk 

Thousands of people have taken to the streets of the Belgian capital of Brussels to protest the government’s Covid-19 restrictions.

massive crowd flooded the streets of the Belgian capital, with demonstrators calling for “freedom” and demanding that authorities abolish the Covid-19 health pass required to enter various venues.

The large-scale protest, which was joined by thousands of people, was organized by an umbrella group, “Samen Voor Vrijheid” (‘Together for Freedom’). The crowd, chanting “Liberty!” and “Freedom!” and holding placards denouncing what they called the government’s “vaccine dictatorship,” marched through the city center from the Gare du Nord railway station to the Parc du Cinquantenaire to the east.

The demonstration attracted several public figures and politicians, including even some European Parliament members. “We are asking for our rights, freedom and our liberty back,” a Romanian MEP Cristian Terhes, from the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, told Politico.

Read More: Arrests at massive anti-lockdown protest

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg praises smart city innovation at CES

In a virtual address last week, Buttigieg said he anticipates cities that will be built on connected technology and guided by policy that encourages collaboration.

Smart cities and the capabilities of connected infrastructure were a focal point of U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s virtual address to the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week.

“In our lifetimes, we could see truly smart cities built on the connected technology showcased at CES, where cars, buses and infrastructure all communicate with each other to plot safer routes and use less energy,” Buttigieg said.

He also praised cities and states for their innovative responses to the pandemic, noting that “some of the most important innovations were deceptively low-tech.” He pointed to the ways that local leaders have encouraged more walking and biking, in addition to the new ways that cities have used outdoor space for dining. He also said that small solutions like self-healing pavement to reduce potholes “may do more for Americans in our lifetime” than highly exclusive commercial space travel.

The transportation secretary also focused on the public sector’s role in guiding innovation toward the public good. Recalling the history of transportation in the United States, from railroads and aircraft to GPS and e-scooters, he pointed out the role of government in the development of these technologies through basic research, funding and the development of essential infrastructures such as highways and airports.

Looking ahead, Buttigieg outlined six principles the U.S. Department of Transportation is establishing to guide their work on transportation innovation. He described the principles by saying that innovation is not an end in itself, but a chance to improve everyday life. Innovation should help the country “win the 21st century,” support workers, allow for experimentation and learn from setbacks, he said.

Read More: Transportation Sec Buttigieg Jazzed About “Smart Cities”

A Parish councillor in the UK got a police visit and was threatened with arrest for sharing a Facebook post that said “trans rights are boring.”

Read More: UK Man Gets Police Visit For Saying “Trans Rights Are Boring”

Just before Russia-NATO talks kick off in Geneva Monday, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned that if negotiations fail the Western military alliance stands ready for “a new armed conflict in Europe.”

He told Financial Times in a fresh interview, “I know the history of Russia. For centuries, they have experienced conflicts with their neighbors. But Russia has an alternative: to cooperate, to work with NATO.”

The double-vaccinated are almost twice as likely to be infected as unvaccinated people, data from Iceland shows. This is the same pattern as found in data from the U.K. Thorsteinn Siglaugsson has written about the trend in Morgunbladid, the main national newspaper in Iceland, and put up a translation on his website.

After December 20th, the 14-day incidence of COVID-19 infection by vaccination status took a very unexpected turn in Iceland. The infection rate per 100,000 of fully vaccinated adults with booster is now eleven times higher than on December 20th, and the infection rate of double-vaccinated adults seven times higher. At the same time, infections among unvaccinated people have grown by a factor of 2.6 only. Among children, we see a similar change: a tenfold increase among the fully vaccinated while the rate among the unvaccinated is 2.4 times higher than on December 20th.

This change can hardly be explained away by changes in behaviour, such a sudden and decisive change of behavior between groups is impossible. It is also unlikely that testing has suddenly increased this sharply among some groups and not others. We know the protection against infection from vaccination wanes rapidly, but it is out of the question that it should drop so suddenly. The most likely explanation is the new Omicron variant. Foreign data also indicate that the currently available vaccines have little or no effect against Omicron infection.

The data published on covid.is are weighted; the different size of the groups is adjusted for. This means we can use them to conclude regarding probability of infection. At present, triple-vaccinated people are only 30% less likely to get infected than unvaccinated adults, and for vaccinated children the difference is only 15%. This small difference decreases rapidly in both groups. The biggest news, however, is that double-vaccinated people are now 90% more likely to get infected than the unvaccinated. This suggests that the protection provided by two doses of vaccine is in fact less than none, it is the opposite.

Read More: Double Vaccinated Have Double the Infection Rate, Data From Iceland Shows

European Parliament President David Sassoli has died after a prolonged stay in the hospital due to an immune system dysfunction

EU Parliament President has died in an Italian hospital where he had been treated since late December, his spokesman said. The official was suffering from a “serious complication” resulting from an immune system condition.

Spokesman for EU Parliament President David Sassoli confirmed the news of his passing in a statement on Tuesday morning.

Sassoli “passed away at 1.15 am on 11 January at the CRO in Aviano( PN), Italy, where he was hospitalized,” Sassoli’s spokesperson, Roberto Cuillo, tweeted.

The late politician had been at the helm of the European Parliament – the law-making body of the European Union – since 2019.

The @EP_President David Sassoli passed away at 1.15 am on 11 January at the CRO in Aviano( PN), Italy, where he was hospitalized. The date and place of the funeral will be communicated in the next few hours.

— RobertoCuillo (@robertocuillo) January 11, 2022

An Italian Social Democrat, Sassoli was hospitalized on December 26 due to serious immune system dysfunction, his office said, noting that he had ceased all “official activities” as the head of the EU Parliament during that time. The announcement came after Sassoli was treated for pneumonia at a hospital in Strasbourg, France last September. Though at the time his staff said he was in “good condition” and that he had tested negative for Covid-19, the illness nonetheless left him unable to work for some two months. Spokesman Roberto Cuillo declined to share additional details on Sassoli’s health earlier on Monday, though he did state the official would be unable to attend a plenary parliamentary session set for Strasbourg next week.

The European Parliament is comprised of 705 members (MEPs), and is the only directly-elected body of the 27-member block. Its president is elected by MEPs for a two-and-a-half year term, while the EU Parliament itself is elected for five years.

The president represents the legislature on the international arena and in legal matters among other duties.

There are a total of 14 vice-presidents that oversee debates in the chamber if the president is unable to.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Novak Djokovic woke up on Tuesday to his first morning outside immigration detention in Australia, almost a week after he flew into the country – and into an international furore over his COVID-19 vaccination status.

A coalition of progressive organizations took issue with the Biden administration’s failure to streamline election reform

Four activist groups have agreed to boycott an upcoming speech by President Joe Biden in Atlanta, Georgia, urging other Democrats to continue to snub visits by the POTUS until he makes good on election reforms promises.

Led by the Black Voters Matter Fund, the coalition issued a statement on Monday saying they will not attend the Biden speech due to a lack of progress on electoral changes promised on the campaign trail, insisting Georgia will not be used as “a chess piece in someone else’s ineffectual political dealings.” 

“As civil rights leaders and advocates, we reject any visit by President Biden that does not include an announcement of a finalized voting rights plan that will pass both chambers, not be stopped by the filibuster, and be signed into law; anything less is insufficient and unwelcome,” they said, adding “Such an empty gesture, without concrete action, without signs of real, tangible work, is unacceptable.”

Read more

Federal agency reveals long-term consequences of Biden bill

The Black Voters Matter Fund was joined by the Asian American Advocacy Fund, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, the GALEO Impact Action Fund – a Latino activist group – as well as James Woodall, the former president of the Georgia NAACP. They pressed the White House to take more urgent action on two election reform bills – the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act – which they say will strengthen voter protections and cut down on unfair or discriminatory electoral practices.

Each of the groups campaigned for Biden during the 2020 race, though their support appears to be waning as the White House fails to make “policy progress” on a number of progressive issues, election reform chief among them. 

While Democratic lawmakers attempted to bring reform bills to a floor vote no less than four times last year, they were repeatedly blocked by Republicans, who in some cases used the Senate filibuster – a rule that requires 60 of 100 senators to agree to advance a bill – to defeat the legislation. Democrats and progressive allies have also taken aim at dozens of state-level election bills that passed in 2021, such as Texas’ SB1, which critics say amounts to “voter suppression” despite Governor Greg Abbott’s insistence the bill would “make it easier to vote and harder to cheat.”