Tiny (URL) Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The corporate clout of the mining industry trumped political ideology in Canada when members of all political parties helped to narrowly defeat a bill late last month that would have imposed standards on Canadian mining companies operating in developing countries:

[Dead Link.]

Up to 200,000 Haitians could contract cholera as the outbreak which has already killed 800 is set to spread across the battered Caribbean nation of nearly 10 million, the United Nations said:

[Yahoo News, Dead Link.]

A Christian woman has been sentenced to hang in Pakistan after being convicted of defaming the Prophet Mohammed:

[Daily Telegraph, Dead Link.]

Unemployed workers will be barred from claiming benefits for up to three years if they repeatedly refuse job offers under radical plans to reform the welfare system:

[Daily Telegraph, Dead Link.]

Israel will begin constructing a barrier on its border with Egypt within the next two weeks. The government has said that the central purpose of this fence is to keep the growing number of illegal migrants from infiltrating the country:

[Link.]

Six years after it first debuted, the $1,000 frittata at Norma’s in New York’s Le Parker Meridien hotel continues to draw attention. Called the “Zillion Dollar Lobster Frittata”, the dish is made with six eggs, lobster claws and 10 oz. of Sevruga caviar:

[Fox Business News, Dead Link.]

Poor ‘Will be pushed out of southern England'. Bath, Chelmsford, Newbury and Maidstone are among towns that will become “no-go” areas for the poor within 15 years because of the coalition government’s plans to cut housing benefits. The claim, made by the Chartered Institute of Housing, followed the Archbishop of Canterbury’s intervention. He said he was worried by the proposal of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith to threaten the long-term unemployed with benefit cuts:

[The Week, Dead Link.]

Some 42,389,619 Americans received food stamps in August, a 17% rise from the same time a year ago, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which tracks the data. That number is up 58.5% from August 2007, before the recession began. By population, Washington, D.C. had the largest share of residents receiving food stamps: More than a fifth, 21.1%, of its residents collected assistance in August. Washington was followed by Mississippi, where 20.1% of residents received food stamps, and Tennessee, where 20% tapped into the government nutrition program:

[Link.]