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A CHAOTIC privatised air traffic control system caused last week's tragic midair collision in southern Germany, not pilot error. Swiss authorities attempted to blame the pilot of the Russian plane which crashed into a cargo plane, killing 71 people-52 of them children. Air traffic control in Switzerland was privatised this year and handed to the Skyguide company.

THE DUMAN family's claim for asylum was refused on Thursday 4 July. They are to be deported to Germany on Wednesday morning, 10 July. The Dumans' solicitor is making further representations. The family had left Turkey because, as Kurds, they had suffered years of harassment.

MAJOR STRIKES over pay could hit Germany after postal and telecoms workers staged "warning" stoppages on Monday. Unions are demanding a 6.5 percent rise for 250,000 workers. Inflation is just over 1 percent.

MASS protests greeted US president George W Bush as he began his tour of Europe last week. Over 100,000 people demonstrated in the German capital, Berlin, on Tuesday. The following day 50,000 marched.

A Stop the War Coalition teach-in took place in Nottingham last Saturday. Around 60 people engaged in a series of dynamic discussions. The final rally included Lindsey German, the editor of Socialist Review, Neil Kingsnorth of Yorkshire CND, and Alan Simpson, the local Labour MP.

AROUND 70 people joined a Marxist forum on "Women's liberation in the 21st century" in Manchester at the weekend. Sheila Rowbotham, a leading socialist feminist writer, joined Lindsey German, author of Sex, Class and Socialism, to lead off the forum. After a question and answer session with the speakers the forum broke into discussion groups. Maryam Choudhary, a further education student in Manchester, brought her friend Kate from college: "If you ask people to come they will. I wasn't apprehensive about it at all. It was really good to hear everyone else's views, not just the views of our teachers."

Just how bad is the economic situation? It is very, very serious indeed. You have for the first time in 20 years a simultaneous downturn in all three major sections of the advanced capitalist world. That is a recession in the US, a recession in Germany and across continental Europe, and a recession in Japan.

The No Place in Burnley for the BNP campaign was launched at a press conference last week in the run-up to the council by-elections set to take place on Thursday 22 November. A representative from Burnley Football Club signed up to the statement, as well as local trade unionists, Labour and Liberal Democrat councillors, clergy, residents, and a visitor to Burnley who was a refugee from Nazi Germany.

German socialist Karl Liebknecht stands out as one of the most inspirational figures in the history of the socialist movement. He spent much of his life on the extreme left of the Social Democratic Party, the German equivalent of the Labour Party, before breaking from it and helping to found a revolutionary organisation.

Suddenly the US government doesn't seem so keen on promoting big business use of patents. It threatened to override the patent on the antibiotic Cipro if its German manufacturer, Bayer, did not cut the price. Cipro can be used to treat some anthrax infections.

THE ONCE-pacifist German Green Party held a conference two weeks ago where the leadership announced its support for Bush's war against Afghanistan. Green Party leader and foreign minister Joschka Fischer's speech echoed the war hysteria and propaganda of Bush, Blair, and German chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the Social Democratic Party.

BSE-"mad cow disease"- has suddenly become a key issue right across Europe. In France, Italy, Greece, Spain and, above all, Germany, beef consumption has slumped by up to 40 percent in the wake of a sudden rise in BSE cases.