NSW planning minister Tony Kelly announced on January 18 he had approved plans by Delfin Lend Lease to build 4800 homes in Calderwood, west of Albion Park.
The decision has angered many nearby residents. It also ignored strong opposition from Shellharbour council. Opponents of the development say it is unnecessary and will destroy prime agricultural land.
The Calderwood development, which falls within the boundary of Shellharbour Council, was approved under Part 3A of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act.
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Thousands of students braved the notoriously brutal Sudanese police and security forces on January 30 in anti-government protests inspired by the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, SudaneseTribune.com reported that day.
Rallies took place at three universities and other sites across the capital, as well as in east and west Sudan.
Students called for General Omar al Bashir鈥檚 National Congress Party government to resign and condemned recent austerity measures and ongoing attacks of democratic rights.
In 2009, more than a 100 activists were arrested in a swoop on a community centre in Nottingham in an operation involving hundreds of police.
They were alleged to be planning to close down Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. It was revealed that one of the organisers of the alleged protest, Mark Stone, was an undercover cop who had tipped off the police.
Stone was unveiled after his partner found a passport in his real name of Mark Kennedy. He was confronted by Camp for Climate Action activists and confessed all.
More than 1000 members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) met with President Hugo Chavez on January 19 and decided on five key strategic lines for the next two years.
The discussion included recognition of important weaknesses in the party.
Chavez, who is also president of the governing PSUV, presented the document, Strategic Lines of Political Action of the PSUV for 2011-2012, to the 鈥淣ational Assembly of Socialists鈥 in Vargas state.
About 1440 party leaders were present.
There seems to be a misconception in the general community that there is something attractive or good about jobs in the mining sector.
But as someone whose main career included 25 years in the refinery, mining construction and production industries, I can state quite emphatically that mining jobs are shit jobs.
It wasn't always the case, but mining jobs have become progressively less desirable in the past 20 years.
Irish Taosiech (prime minister) Brian Cowen resigned as leader of the government Fianna Fail party on January 22.
The move came in the midst of a political crisis caused by the Cowen government accepting an 85 billion euro bailout package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
The package will be accompanied by savage spending cuts that will drastically deepen the austerity imposed on the Irish people in response to the financial crisis that hit the southern Irish state in 2008.
The Edmund Rice Centre released the public statement below on January 26.
We, Australian organisations and individuals, unite to offer this statement to our nation.
A 鈥淢emorandum of Understanding鈥 (MOU) was recently signed between the Australian government, the government of Afghanistan and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, permitting the involuntary repatriation from Australia of unsuccessful Afghan asylum seekers back to Afghanistan.
Venezuela鈥檚 petroleum corporation in the US, Citgo, announced on January 27 the start of its sixth year providing subsidised heating oil to low-income people in the US.
An estimated 132,000 households across the US will benefit from the program this year, amounting to US$60 million of savings.
The program is carried out with US non-profit group Citizens Energy Corporation. Joseph P. Kennedy II said: 鈥淓very year, we hear from families who struggle each and every day to put food on the table and heat their homes.
Sexism getting worse, not better
Jess Moore, in her article 鈥淩aunch culture, sex and sexuality鈥 (GLW#864), addresses some important issues affecting women today.
I don鈥檛 disagree with her main conclusion (replace sexist heterosexual raunch culture with non-sexist and queer raunch culture) but feel it is a little simplistic (although I guess with word limits that鈥檚 hard to avoid).
There has been a new wave of excellent books by feminist writers published in the last couple of years that critique current social trends.
For a decade, Ireland was heralded by the most ardent partisans of neoliberal capitalism as a model to be imitated. The 鈥淐eltic Tiger鈥 had a higher growth rate than the European average.
Tax rates on companies had been reduced to 12.5% and the rate actually paid by the transnational corporations that had set up business there was between 3 and 4% 鈥 a CEO鈥檚 dream! By comparison, the company tax rate is 39.5% in Japan, 39.2% in Britain, 34.4% in France and 28% in the US.
Ireland鈥檚 budget deficit was nil in 2007. In this earthly paradise, everybody seemed to benefit.
Wharfies employed by stevedoring company Patrick at four different ports across Australia took strike action in the last week of January in pursuit of a new enterprise bargaining agreement (EBA).
It was the most significant industrial action on the wharves since the 1998 Patrick lockout.
In recent ballots organised by Fairwork Australia, workers at the strike-affected ports voted (by margins of 94% to 100%) to take a range of different forms of industrial action to press their claim.
As category five tropical cyclone Yasi approached the north Queensland coast on February 3, a political cyclone was already sweeping Egypt. For days, Australian TV news was dominated by these two stories.
Incredibly, in Egypt the main government TV station news failed to report the fact that millions of Egyptians had taken to the streets in a huge February 1 protest against the Hosni Mubarak dictatorship.
Hiding the truth is what you鈥檇 expect from an iron-fisted dictatorship that has long sub-contracted its services to the CIA to torture victims of the 鈥渨ar on terror鈥.
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