Train strikes worsen UK’s week of turmoil over economy, energy
LONDON — Trains in Britain all but ground to a halt Saturday as coordinated strikes by rail workers added to a week of turmoil caused by soaring energy prices and unfunded tax cuts that roiled financial markets.
Only about 11% of train services were expected to operate across the U.K. on Saturday, according to Network Rail. Unions said they called the latest in a series of one-day strikes to demand that wage increases keep pace with inflation that is expected to peak at around 11% this month.
Consumers were also hit with a jump in their energy bills Saturday as the fallout from the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushes gas and electricity prices higher. Household bills are expected to rise by about 20%, even after the government stepped in to cap prices.
Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has been in office less than a month, cited the cost-of-living crisis as the reason she moved swiftly to introduce a controversial economic stimulus program, which includes $48 billion of unfunded tax cuts.
Concern that the plans would push government debt to unsustainable levels sent the pound tumbling to a record low against the dollar last week and forced the Bank of England to intervene in the bond market.
Four labor unions have called three 24-hour strikes over the next eight days, ensuring service disruptions for much of the week.
The timing is of particular concern for runners and fans trying to get to Sunday’s London Marathon, which is expected to attract 42,000 competitors.
Mick Lynch, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers Union, said the strikes were designed to target the annual conference of Truss’ Conservative Party, which begins Sunday in Birmingham, England.
“We don’t want to inconvenience the public, and we’re really sorry that that’s happening,’’ Lynch said. “But the government has brought this dispute on. They (put) the challenges down to us, to cut our jobs, to cut our pensions and to cut our wages against inflation.”
Lynch urged Transport Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan to take “urgent steps to allow a negotiated settlement.” The union said the latest figures showed railway bosses benefiting from government tax cuts.
Ga. voting rights: A federal judge on Friday found that Georgia election practices challenged by a group associated with Democrat Stacey Abrams do not violate the constitutional rights of voters, ruling in favor of the state on all remaining issues in a lawsuit filed nearly four years ago.
The lawsuit was filed in November 2018, weeks after Abrams narrowly lost the governor’s race to Republican Brian Kemp.
Throughout that contest, Abrams had accused Kemp, then secretary of state, of using his position as the state’s top elections official to promote voter suppression. Kemp vehemently denied the allegations.
A group of Afghan women Saturday protested a suicide bombing that killed or wounded dozens of students in a Shiite education center in the capital Kabul a day earlier, demanding better security from the Talibanrun government.
The bomber struck in a Shiite neighborhood populated mostly by ethnic Hazaras, killing 19 people and wounding 27. Among the casualties were teenagers
Afghan women protest:
taking practice university entrance exams, a Taliban spokesman said.
About 20 protesters Saturday gathered in the area for about 45 minutes before their rally was broken up by Taliban security.
They carried banners in English and Dari reading “Stop Hazar Genocide.”
Latvia election: Latvia held a general election Saturday amid divisions over Russia’s attack on Ukraine among the Baltic country’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority. An exit poll predicted that the center-right will win the most votes but whoever forms the next government will face huge war-induced energy concerns.
A joint exit poll forecast that the New Unity party of Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins would win, capturing 22.5% of the vote.
Karins currently leads a four-party minority coalition. The 57-year-old dual Latvian-U.S. citizen who
was born in Wilmington, Delaware, told Latvian media that it would be easiest to continue with the same coalition government if New Unity wins.
Karins has excluded any cooperation with pro-Kremlin parties.
Support for parties catering to Latvia’s ethnic-Russian minority, who make up over 25% of Latvia’s 1.9 million people, is expected to be mixed; some loyal voters have abandoned them since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine started on Feb. 24.
NKorea missile tests: North Korea on Saturday test-fired two short-range ballistic missiles, its neighbors said, the fourth round in the last week of weapons launches that prompted quick and strong condemnation from its rivals.
In an unusually powerful rebuke of North Korea’s weapons programs, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said North Korea’s
“obsession” with nuclear weapons is deepening the suffering of its own people, and warned of an “overwhelming response” from South Korean and U.S. militaries should such weapons be used.
Yoon’s comments could enrage North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who in July alleged that Yoon’s government was led by “confrontation maniacs” and “gangsters.”
Kim has also rebuffed Yoon’s offers of massive assistance in return for denuclearization.
The North’s testing binge over the past week is seen as a response to recent naval drills between South Korea and the United States and their other training that involved Japan. North Korea views such military exercises by the allies as an invasion rehearsal and argues they reveal U.S. and South Korean “double standards” because they brand the North’s weapons tests as
provocation.
Burkina Faso coup: Angry protesters attacked the French Embassy in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou on Saturday after supporters of the West African nation’s new coup leader accused France of harboring the ousted interim president, a charge French authorities denied.
A group of soldiers announced on state television Friday that Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba had been overthrown, less than nine months after he’d mounted a coup in Burkina Faso.
Video on social media showed residents with lit torches outside the perimeter of the French embassy. Other images showed part of the compound ablaze.
France has denied any role in the events unfolding in its former colony, and warned its citizens to stay at home amid a “confusing” situation in Ouagadougou.