PUBLIC SECTOR workers - including nurses, firefighters, teachers, civil servants, council staff and community workers - staged an angry tea-time rally at the Dáil on Tuesday against the Fianna Fáil/Green Party Budget that will cut their pay by up to 15% or do away with jobs altogether in some sectors. The Government's Budget and media onslaught against the public sector is being seen by observers as a softening up of public opinion to allow employers force down wages and erode workers' rights across the entire economy, including the private sector, and pave the way for possible attacks on the minimum wage. Free article

SINN FÉIN Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin has described Budget 2010 as a savage attack on the people and a budget that was cobbled together by economic illiterates. He said it was anti-jobs and would serve to further depress the economy as well as causing poverty and emigration. The Cavan-Monaghan TD said the cuts to social welfare, to public services like health and education and to the pay of ordinary public service workers were both wrong and avoidable. He said his party had presented a viable alternative to the Government's approach and would continue to advance its proposals. Free article

A barrister acting on behalf of the family of Robert Hamill has suggested that Ronnie Flanagan, the RUC Chief Constable at the time of the murder, "gave the nod" to the subsequent RUC cover up. The allegation emerged during the second day of closing submissions at the inquiry into the killing of Portadown Catholic Robert Hamill in 1997. Barrister Barra McGrory told the inquiry that the least the former Chief Constable could be held responsible for was "gross negligence" by giving "free rein" to the late Chief Superintendent Maynard McBurney to conduct the investigation into serious allegations against one of his officers. Free article

AS the UN climate change summit entered its sixth day in Copenhagen on Saturday 12 December, 100,000 people from around the world took over the Danish capital to demand immediate action on reducing carbon emissions and climate justice for the developing world. Indigenous activists from Peru and Bolivia led the youthful protest march from Copenhagen city centre to the locked-down Bella Centre, where the COP15 conference was taking place. A large bloc - System Change Not Climate Change - brought together a range of climate justice groups. Free article

THE final re-sentencing process for the Miami Five took place on Tuesday last in the same Miami Courthouse and before the same judge that ordered their initial incarceration. The resentencing did not produce any more justice than their 11 preceding years inside the US justice system. The Miami Five - Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González are Cubans arrested by the FBI in 1998. Free article

BELFAST High Court has heard that RUC officers closed ranks and lied under oath to shield two of their colleagues from facing murder charges. Lawyers acting for the husband of Nora McCabe who was killed by a plastic bullet in 1981 said the RUC cover up surrounding the killing led to a break down in the rule of law. Jim McCabe is seeking a court order to challenge a decision not to charge the sergeant who fired the fatal round or his commanding chief superintendent with either murder or manslaughter. Both men have since died. Free article

SINN FEIN Junior Minister in the North's Executive, Gerry Kelly has said that those responsible for a bomb threat at his family home on 9 December will in no way detract him from his work as a public representative. Speaking from the United States, where he was marking 25 years of the MacBride Principles, Gerry Kelly said; "My constituency office was phoned this morning and a man claimed that a bomb would go off outside my family home within an hour. My home was subsequently checked and nothing was found. Free article