UNITED NATIONS inspectors have left North Korea after Pyongyang expelled them and announced plans to resume the production of weapons-grade plutonium, the material used by the country in its first – and so far only – nuclear test blast in 2006. Officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency removed seals and surveillance cameras from the nuclear plant at Yongbyon before leaving.
Archive for April, 2009
CND condemns plans for city centre nuclear dustbin
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 23rd, 2009THE Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has hit out at reports that the Government will shortly announce that Plymouth is to become Britain’s only “city centre” nuclear dump.
Was Uncle Sam behind the plot to kill Morales?
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 23rd, 2009BOLIVIAN security forces stopped an assassination plot against President Evo Morales last week, killing two Balkan mercenaries and an Irishman in a half hour shoot-out in the opposition stronghold of Santa Cruz. Two others were captured after they exchanged gunfire with troops and detonated a grenade that blew out the windows of a hotel. Bolivian Police Commander Victor Hugo Escobar said they also confiscated explosives, high calibre weapons and plans to follow the president’s motorcade.
By Tribune Web Editor /Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
Should Gordon Brown say ‘sorry’ for his spin-doctor’s emails? You said: YES: 84%, NO: 16%
By Tribune Web Editor /Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
ONCE we were told that Tony Blair “didn’t do God”. Now it seems the former Prime Minister can’t stop bothering Him, as he travels the world spreading the good news about his inter-faith foundation. Perhaps, if Mr Blair has a moment to spare, he can put his hands together and pray for a miracle for [...]
VISUAL ARTS: The medium, materials and Messager’s messages
By Tribune Web Editor /Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Annette Messager: The Messengers
Hayward Gallery, London
LIKE cubist paintings of the early part of the 20th century, which offered multiple perspectives on a busy and fragmented world, so the French artist Annette Messager presents many aspects of herself. She is, she says, “‘several people at the same time”, listing Trickster, the Practical Woman, the Liar and the Peddler as possibilities. So far, so intriguing – and a challenging theme for a retrospective.
BOOKS: Pub quiz perfection
By Tribune Web Editor /Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009You Are Here: A Portable History of the Universe by Christopher Potter
Hutchinson, £20
THE three essentials which distinguish homo sapiens from other hominoids are art, ritual burial and fish. Neanderthals lived alongside abundant supplies of fish but were such gastronomic apes they never had the good taste to eat any. So, sorry guys, despite the impressive toolmaking you do not qualify as human.
FILM: Swedish vampire chiller has bully beef to get teeth into
By Tribune Web Editor /Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009NOT since Ingmar Bergman’s heyday has a Swedish film been so enthusiastically received by worldwide critics as teenage vampire chiller Let the Right One In. Leading horror movie expert Kim Newman reckons the film “can stand toe-to-toe with” Victor Erice’s The Spirit of the Beehive (1973), Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) and Jean Cocteau’s Orphee (1950) among fantasy classics.
TELEVISION: Willie’s wonky approach to factoring in chocolate
By Tribune Web Editor /Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Willie’s Chocolate Revolution
Channel 4
CSI
Channel 5
PLEASE, someone save us from evangelical foodies. We are full to bursting point on Jamie Oliver’s pontification about the recipes he thinks will save Britain from national dietary catastrophe and working-class kitchen suicide. We despair of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s rural manure-whiff natural cooking and we recoil from Gordon Ramsay’s self-fulfilling pan-banging, Anglo-Saxon-fuelled scullery skills. In addition, television force feeds us so-called great British cooking, regional judgemental culinary programmes, endless satellite repeats of market kitchens, cooks ready, steady and raring to go and Rick Stein on a barge somewhere in France.
RADIO: Some words of perfect wisdom in the wheelwright’s shop
By Tribune Web Editor /Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Wheels and Stones
Radio 3
LIKE most British industries, farming is hardly thriving. Our country towns and villages are full of second home-owning city workers. Our modest crops are gathered by migrant labour. The Royal Show has gone down the tubes, as fans of The Archers will know. We have long ceased to live by what we could grow in this country and now import on a vast scale in order to keep supermarket prices down. We have lived through the agricultural revolution, industrial revolution and imperialism. We deliberately ran our industrial production down and put all our eggs into global finance trading. We live amid the ruins of advanced finance capitalism.