Defence cuts: Thousands of soldiers could face compulsory redundancy | UK news. Defence cuts: Thousands of soldiers could face compulsory redundancy, an inevitable consequence of the current spending squeeze. Photograph: David Cheskin/Empics Thousands of soldiers could face compulsory redundancy over the next two years as the army pushes through radical reforms that will be outlined on Thursday. With the army needing to axe 20,000 posts because of budget cuts, commanders are pushing to downsize as quickly as possible rather than prolong the process. This means the next two tranches of redundancy will be huge – and are likely to coincide with the draw-down from Afghanistan, leaving the army to start afresh in 2015. Though it is hoped many soldiers will leave under the voluntary redundancy scheme, the Ministry of Defence acknowledges the target cannot be reached without pushing some to the door. Other historic regiments are believed to have been spared.
The adaptable forces would take over from the reaction forces, but would take 18 months to prepare for combat. Evidence of a US judicial vendetta against WikiLeaks activists mounts | Birgitta Jónsdóttir. I knew when I put down my name as co-producer of a video, released by WikiLeaks, showing United States soldiers shooting civilians in Baghdad from a helicopter that my life would never be the same. Telling the truth during times of universal deceit might be considered a revolutionary act, but only to those who want to keep us in the dark, not by those who feel compelled to do so. Most of us who expose an inconvenient truth know that we will be attacked for it and ridiculed. And every trick in the book of maintaining power will be applied to silence us. It's no big deal. The beauty of it is that, usually, these attempts gives us a chance to see the actual face of power and to understand, with real-time examples, how healthy or unhealthy our democracies have become.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) tried to hack by legal means into my social media accounts without my knowledge. The resolution is informative and draws together all the key elements I would like to highlight. TUC: phoney war against government is over, says Brendan Barber | Politics. Brendan Barber: ‘Some of our opponents would like to dismiss our campaign as self-interest.’ Photograph: Eamonn McCabe The head of Britain's trade union movement tomorrow declares the "phoney war over", promising a barrage of protest against the government's cuts, ranging from industrial strikes and "peaceful civil disobedience" to petitions by Tory voters in the shires. Brendan Barber, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, setting out plans for the first national demonstration against the cuts on 26 March, said the days of protests being solely about unions going on strike are over.
Unions were now part of a broad church of opposition spanning a range of supporters from student activists to middle-class protesters who defeated the coalition's forestry plans, to families feeling the effect of the welfare reforms to direct activists who have occupied banks, he said. "Back in the autumn last year this was a largely theoretical debate. The Guardian has learned: Ballet's Frederic Franklin may be in his 90s, but he's still dancing | Stage. The first time Frederic Franklin appeared at the London Coliseum, it was alongside the actor Peggy Ashcroft and a troupe of performing elephants. It was 1934 and the classical dancer - now 94 - was appearing in a spectacular Indian-themed music hall extravaganza called The Golden Toy. "It was huge," Franklin recalls. "It had all the stars in it and all kinds of acts - including live elephants, to add something exotic. " Now, more than 70 years later, Franklin is returning to the Coliseum, this time with American Ballet Theatre, to play the Prince's tutor in Swan Lake.
ABT is one of the world's best-known ballet companies and, since its birth in 1940, has been home to a roll call of international stars - from Cuban prima ballerina Alicia Alonso to charismatic Russian defector Mikhail Baryshnikov. Franklin only joined ABT in 1996, at the age of 80, when he thought his dancing career was long over. Franklin returned to Britain in 1933. The chilling transformation of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi | World news | The Observer. Geneva places a high premium on guarding secrets, but rumours are a different currency. Amid momentous scenes being played out across the Middle East last week, sources in the Swiss financial centre were privately gossiping about a visit to Geneva earlier this year by Farhat Bengdara, the governor of the Central Bank of LibyaLibya. According to one popular rumour, Bengdara had visited Geneva with a purpose.
He was there to make changes to key Swiss accounts, into which flow hundreds of millions of dollars of Libyan oil money that are then allocated to the Libyan Investment Authority and the Libyan Central Bank. Financiers in Geneva gossip that, as far back as 17 January, Bengdara established that four new names would be added as signatories on three crucial accounts controlling much of the money. Where Libya's petro-dollars may have been channelled in the weeks since tensions first erupted across the Arab world is hard to say. The similarities may not stop there. Academic fury over order to study the big society | Education | The Observer. Academics will study the "big society" as a priority, following a deal with the government to secure funding from cuts.
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) will spend a "significant" amount of its funding on the prime minister's vision for the country, after a government "clarification" of the Haldane principle – a convention that for 90 years has protected the right of academics to decide where research funds should be spent. Under the revised principle, research bodies must work to the government's national objectives, although the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said that ministers will not meddle in individual projects. It is claimed the AHRC was told that research into the "big society" was non-negotiable if it wished to maintain its funding at £100m a year.
Mandler added: "The government says they have rewritten the Haldane principle but they have junked it, basically. He added: "It is government money. Gary Younge.