General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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The colour of catastrophe
Coral reefs are currently undergoing the most extensive planet-wide bleaching on record, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
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After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
CORALS are symbiotic, meaning they depend on a relationship with another biological organism. Microbes called zooxanthellae live inside the structures corals build out of calcium carbonate.
The microbes photosynthesise, providing corals with energy and nutrients. They also give corals their characteristic vivid colours. However, when corals are placed under stress, they will expel their resident zooxanthellae, turning the coral white.
By far the most serious cause of this stress-related bleaching is warming water. Corals have a typical temperature range they are happy with, and when water temperatures exceed that — particularly for long periods — they bleach.
The bleaching is not merely an aesthetic concern: the expulsion of the zooxanthellae means the corals have lost their main source of food. They may not initially die but they are vulnerable, susceptible to disease and starvation. Longer periods of bleaching and they will die.
When the water temperature becomes too hot, a colourful reef can be transformed into a graveyard. The tropical paradise disappears; as corals die and turn white, a brown algal sludge spreads.
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