Airbus confirms 10,000 job cuts
Troubled planemaker Airbus has announced it is to cut 10,000 jobs across Europe over the next four years.
France will be worst hit with 4,300 job losses. Germany will see 3,700 jobs go while the UK and Spain will see 1,600 and 400 jobs cut respectively.
Airbus said no compulsory redundancies would be imposed but unions have pledged to fight the cuts.
Airbus boss Louis Gallois said the firm was “facing huge challenges” and “was not efficient enough”.
Mr Gallois said the prolonged weakness of the US dollar had made the restructuring necessary, while the production delays to the flagship A380 superjumbo project had provided the “trigger” for the cutbacks.
Immigrants blocked from getting Swedish ID
New rules introduced in January mean immigrants with the right to live and work in Sweden are being barred from receiving Swedish ID cards. A Swedish ID is required to exercise many daily activities in Swedish society, including collecting packages from the post office, opening a bank account, seeing a doctor, or even hiring a DVD and buying alcohol or cigarettes.
The new rules have been introduced by Svensk Kassaservice, an agency formerly part of Posten, the Swedish post office. The agency, along with some banks, is responsible for issuing ID cards in Sweden.
Racist Rabbi Compares Blacks to Monkeys
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SWEDEN: Lesbians prevented from kissing in nightclub
A Stockholm nightclub has been asked to pay 30,000 kronor in compensation to two lesbian women who were requested by a security guard to refrain from kissing.
HomO, the Ombudsman against Discrimination on grounds of Sexual Orientation, contacted the nightclub after receiving a complaint from the two women in question. The ombudsman dismissed as implausible the security guard’s claim that similar requests were also made to heterosexual couples.
After a failed attempt to reach a settlement, HomO has now decided to sue the nightclub for damages.
A similar incident occurred at a Stockholm restaurant in the summer of 2003. Two women were first issued a warning and then thrown out of a restaurant for kissing in the queue to the toilets.
U.N. calls U.S. data on Iran’s nuclear aims unreliable
Although international concern is growing about Iran’s nuclear program and its regional ambitions, diplomats here say most U.S. intelligence shared with the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency has proved inaccurate and none has led to significant discoveries inside Iran.
The officials said the CIA and other Western spy services had provided sensitive information to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency at least since 2002, when Iran’s long-secret nuclear program was exposed. But none of the tips about supposed secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic Republic was developing illicit weapons.
“Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us has proved to be wrong,” a senior diplomat at the IAEA said. Another official here described the agency’s intelligence stream as “very cold now” because “so little panned out.”
Dutch politician doubts Muslim ministers’ loyalty
The leader of a Dutch anti-immigration party will call for a vote of no-confidence in two Muslim government ministers next week, citing their dual nationality as the issue, a newspaper reported on Saturday.
Geert Wilders said in an interview with the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad the appointment of Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb and Turkish-born Nebahat Albayrak as junior ministers was wrong because both could have loyalties toward countries other than the Netherlands.
Wilders, whose Party for Freedom (PVV) party won 9 seats out of 150 in the November election, said he will call for a no-confidence vote when the cabinet discusses its policy plans in parliament.
The new cabinet, formed by Christian Democrats, Labour and the Christian Union and sworn in on Thursday by the Dutch queen, is expected to soften immigration policy, which had been tightened under the previous coalition in response to the rise of the populist Pim Fortuyn in 2002.
Maverick politician Fortuyn broke taboos with his criticism of Muslim immigrants before he was murdered by an animal rights activist.
Eurotunnel wins asylum seeker ruling
Eurotunnel, which runs the undersea rail link between Britain and France, has won a historic arbitration decision against both countries’ governments over the security breach that saw thousands of asylum seekers invade the tunnel crossing the English Channel.
The decision, which heralds the company’s first injection of public money, could be worth millions of pounds in damages to the tunnel’s operator, which had claimed £30m (€45m, $59m) in damages from Paris and London.
Men banned from watching women’s cricket
Male spectators, except family members, will be banned when Pakistan hosts the eight-team International Cricket Council (ICC) Women’s World Cup qualifiers in November, officials said Wednesday.
However, officials have hailed the decision to stage the matches in the conservative Islamic republic as a sign that the country is becoming more moderate and is making efforts to allow women to play sport.
“The decision proves that women’s cricket is progressing in our country and through this event we would promote a softer and moderate image of Pakistan,” said Shamsa Hashmi, secretary of the Pakistan Cricket Board women’s wing.
Record immigration to Sweden in 2006
Immigration to Sweden in 2006 reached its highest level since records began. At the same time emigration also soared to a level not seen in over 100 years, according to official figures published by Statistics Sweden.
Swedish citizenship was granted to more people than ever before in 2006, a year in which the country’s population increased by 65,505. The total population recorded on 31st December was 9,113,257.
Woman gang-raped after being put in males cells
A woman erroneously detained in a male cell at Volksrust police station was raped repeatedly by her fellow cellmates, said Mpumalanga police Captain Leonard Hlathi on Saturday.
He said police would investigate why she was placed in the cell after her arrest for being drunk in public on Friday.