A taped off section inside a school which has been affected with sub standard reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac)
Campaigners dismayed as government plans to replace hospitals built with Raac delayed again
FURTHER delays in replacing hospitals built with Raac concrete are a “blow” to NHS staff, as campaigners wanted to prevent the “severe risk of collapsing floors and ceilings.”
The government’s spending watchdog announced today that a pledge to deal with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) in seven hospitals by 2030 would not be met.
A report from the National Audit Office (NAO) found that the infrastructure plans, drawn up by the previous Conservative government, would only be completed by 2032 and 2033.
Despite the new timeline, the NAO also claimed that some new building projects are already facing pressure to finish for their revised deadline.
The watchdog also said that by the end of 2025, works to alleviate the risks of Raac have already cost more than £500 million.
Campaigners and unions hit back, warning that longer delays will mean “greater risks” for patients and NHS staff, and will mean “higher costs” to fix the issues plaguing NHS hospitals.
Raac is a lightweight material which was used widely in the 1960s and ’80s to build public buildings such as hospitals and schools.
The beach in the Gaza Strip has become a makeshift camp for displaced people whose homes were destroyed. Photograph: Omar Ashtawy/APAImages/Shutterstock
White House says seven-strong board, chaired by Trump, will steer Gaza through next phase of reconstruction
Donald Trump has appointed the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and former British prime minister Tony Blair to a newly created Gaza “board of peace”, a body he claims will steer the next phase of reconstruction and governance in the war-ravaged territory.
The White House said the seven-strong “founding executive board” will also include Trump’s special envoy, the property developer Steve Witkoff; the World Bank president, Ajay Banga; and the president’s son-in-law and long-time adviser Jared Kushner. Trump himself will serve as chair, with further appointments expected in the coming weeks.
“Each executive board member will oversee a defined portfolio critical to Gaza’s stabilization and long-term success, including, but not limited to, governance capacity-building, regional relations, reconstruction, investment attraction, large-scale funding, and capital mobilization,” a White House statement said.
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Blair’s inclusion is likely to prove contentious in the region. The former Labour leader remains a divisive figure in the Middle East for his role in the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Soon after leaving office in 2007 he became special representative of the Quartet, a group composed of the US, EU, Russia and the UN seeking peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But he became seen as too close to the Israelis and stepped down in 2015.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
US President Donald Trump, seen through a viewfinder, speaks at the Detroit Economic Club, in Detroit, January 13, 2026
With the illegitimate partition of Palestine, and inflicting ongoing terror on Palestinians, Israel and the US continue to smash down the basic principles of democracy
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With Trump briefing his army that the future war and enemy is internal, ICE must surely be taking lessons from the IDF as to how one controls and intimidates a local population. The road checks, walls, settler violence and attacks, shootings, mass arrests and taking prisoners are a template that is being transferred to the US.
Regarding the local population as the enemy, defining them as terrorist is a well-worn tactic. In 1954, Israel passed A Prevention of Infiltration Law. Its effect was to criminalise those Palestinians who had been made refugees during the Nakba if they sought to return to their homes and land. Pass a law to make citizens aliens or define drug dealers and protesters as terrorists — then the normal rule of law does not apply. Indeed, there are no rules, anyone or anything can be defined as illegal. Just label it terrorist.
It is easy to take the parallels too far. In this neoliberal global war, the US does not need lessons in violence and aggression. It, too, is born on the back of settler colonialism and genocide, has a culture of guns and violence. But the strength of Israel as a 20th-century exemplar of what can be done without recrimination is evident.
This is not some historical precedent from before civilisation and enlightenment when everyone did abhorrent things. After the horrors of the second world war, “never again” was not just about the Holocaust, it was meant to bring about settling issues between states without recourse to war. Setting red lines of international law not to be crossed.
But Israel has crossed them time and again; relegitimised genocide, made it an acceptable tactic to kill tens of thousands of women and children deliberately, starve a population and create a famine, flatten a country and commit ecocide while destroying its health, education and water systems. No wonder Trump and Netanyahu get on most of the time — they are creating a new world order based on fascist means, morals and tactics.
It is not necessary to do historic comparisons. It is not the salutes they make nor the language they use — it is the ideology they share. Authoritarian, opposing equality, individual and collective rights while celebrating violence, embracing paramilitarism and seeking to expand territory using threats of armed conflict to underpin economic bullying. All classic traits of fascism in the making.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.The original Fascists Mussolini and HitlerOrcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (C) chairs the cabinet meeting in Ramallah, West Bank on November 26, 2024. [Photo by Palestinian Presidency / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images]
The Palestinian Cabinet on Tuesday called for urgent international pressure on Israel to halt the worsening humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, as displaced families continue to endure severe cold and widespread destruction of shelters.
In a statement issued after its weekly meeting, the Cabinet urged the international community to intervene immediately to end the “humanitarian tragedy in Gaza”. It stressed that any meaningful solution requires lifting the siege, reopening border crossings, and allowing the entry of humanitarian aid, construction materials and mobile homes to address the growing needs of the population.
The Cabinet held the occupying authorities and the international community fully responsible for the deaths of children caused by exposure to extreme cold, particularly after thousands of tents sheltering displaced families were flooded, uprooted or destroyed.
Earlier on Tuesday, authorities in the Gaza Strip reported that the number of people who have died from cold-related causes since the start of the winter season had risen to seven, bringing the total to 24 deaths, including 21 children, since the outbreak of the Israeli war in October 2023.
During its meeting, the Cabinet reviewed the work of the government’s emergency operations room in Gaza. Despite severe restrictions imposed by Israel, the statement said the operations room had managed to carry out several relief measures, including distributing hundreds of locally produced tents, relocating families to safer areas, reinforcing water supplies and clearing rubble from key roads.
The Palestinian Cabinet reiterated that the scale of the crisis requires immediate and decisive international action to protect civilians and alleviate their suffering.
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Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Four more who had paused their strikes choose not to continue after government opts against giving contract to Elbit Systems UK
Three Palestine Action-affiliated prisoners have announced the end of their hunger strike after the government decided not to award a £2bn contract to the Israeli arms company subsidiary Elbit Systems UK – with another four who had paused their protest choosing not to continue.
Fears had been growing for the welfare of those taking part. On Wednesday, Heba Muraisi, 31, would have been on day 73 of refusing food, the same number of days as reached by the Irish republican hunger striker Kieran Doherty, who survived the longest of 10 men who died in a 1981 action. The earliest death among the Irish republicans was after 46 days, raising fears about the risk to life of the prisoners in jail awaiting trial for offences relating to protests claimed by Palestine Action.
Among their demands had been to shut down Elbit Systems, a slogan used by Palestine Action in its campaign against the company’s UK sites.
Late on Wednesday, Prisoners for Palestine said the decision not to grant Elbit Systems UK the contract, under which it would have trained 60,000 British troops a year, fulfilled a key demand. It said the company had won more than 10 public contracts since 2012, and so the decision by the Ministry of Defence marked a shift in thinking among officials.
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The Guardian understands that Umar Khalid, 22, who resumed his hunger strike on Saturday after previously pausing it, is continuing to refuse food.
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Muraisi’s transfer back to HMP Bronzefield in Surrey had been accepted by HMP New Hall in Wakefield, to which she was moved last year, hundreds of miles from her family and friends. Her transfer had been another demand of the hunger strikers.
Prisoners for Palestine said Hoxha had been offered a meeting with the head of the joint extremism unit at her prison, which it said “orchestrates the prisoners’ treatment as ‘terrorists’”.
Another demand had been an end to the censorship of prisoners’ communications. The group said: “During the hunger strike, some of the prisoners started receiving bulk packages of withheld mail, and in one case received an apology from prison staff for a letter that was delayed by six months. Books on the topics of Gaza and feminism have also been given after months of waiting.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAKeir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
A taped off section inside a school which has been affected with sub standard reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac)
