NightOwl

Trade negotiations between the UK and Israel seek to establish a new bilateral agreement and have been ongoing since 2022. In the talks Reynolds is dealing with a minister in Tel Aviv, Nir Barkat, who is one of the more extreme proponents of Israel's brutal war in Gaza.

The government's announcement was made two days after Israel killed over 30 Palestinians in an airstrike on a school housing displaced people in central Gaza.

Tom Wills, the director of the Trade Justice Movement, told Declassified: "It defies belief that Labour has chosen to continue pursuing a trade agreement with Israel. Instead of seeking closer trade ties, the UK should express its opposition to genocide, and its support of the International Court of Justice, by suspending trade privileges with Israel."

He added: "The UK has a moral obligation to ensure that it is not complicit in Israel's ongoing violations of international law. It is impossible to see how continuing trade negotiations will achieve that outcome."

A recent legal review of UK policy towards Israel found that it is likely Britain's trade relationship with Israel has helped to facilitate its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/19239162

The 60,000 books in the Joanine Library are all hundreds of years old. Keeping texts readable for that long, safe from mold and moisture and nibbling bugs, requires dedication. The library’s original architects designed 6-foot (1.8 meters) stone walls to keep out the elements. Employees dust all day, every day.

And then there are the bats. For centuries, small colonies of these helpful creatures have lent their considerable pest control expertise to the library. In the daytime—as scholars lean over historic works and visitors admire the architecture—the bats roost quietly behind the two-story bookshelves. At night, they swoop around the darkened building, eating the beetles and moths that would otherwise do a number on all that old paper and binding glue.

The library dates the bats’ entry to the late 18th century. That’s when records indicate the purchase of large leather sheets from Russia, presumably to protect the hall’s desks and tables from the nightly rain of guano. Employees use the same system today, while the books themselves are behind wire mesh, says the library’s deputy director, António Eugénio Maia do Amaral. (The bats’ tendency to pee next to a portrait of the library’s namesake, King John V, is harder to address.)

The protest took place outside a Liberal Party fundraiser in downtown Halifax on Tuesday attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“The message to the government is that they have violated our members’ Charters rights,” Christopher Monette, director of public affairs for Teamsters Canada, told the NB Media Co-op.

He said the Minister’s decision shows private industry that “government will swoop in and save them” in a conflict with labour. CN and CPKC didn’t make anyone available for an interview.

A former top Saudi intelligence official, Saad al-Jabri, accused MbS of forging his father King Salman’s signature to deploy ground troops to Yemen in 2015, and accused him of conspiring to murder former King Abdullah to make way for his father’s reign. These explosive claims were featured in the BBC documentary The Kingdom: The World’s Most Powerful Prince, prompting a renewed wave of scrutiny regarding MbS’s controversial actions during his rise to power.

Danielle Larivee, a vice-president at the United Nurses of Alberta, said nurses are “very alarmed” by hospital transfers she said could negatively affect care and drive critical health-care workers from the province.

Like Parks, Larivee said the worry is the restructuring will lead to more bureaucracy and less co-ordination across the system.

“We're not seeing any evidence at all to support the idea that this is about improving access to care, about improving services or even about saving money,” said Larivee in an interview.

"If we're not saving money and not making care better, why are we doing it?"

Aviation is one of the hardest sectors to decarbonise with existing technology and researchers have stressed the importance of curbing the growing demand for flights through measures that affect the price of a ticket. Researchers have proposed putting levies on frequent flyers – a tax that rises with each extra flight a person takes – and ending subsidies to the sector.