World Briefs

Members of Britain's biggest rail union working for Network Rail have launched a two-day strike over jobs and conditions, a Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union spokesman said yesterday.

"If there is a signal failure it will not be put right," a RMT spokesman told Reuters, underlining the impact the action could have. "Huge amounts of maintenance work have already had to be cancelled and the effect on services will be cumulative."

RMT and Network Rail are trying to reach an agreement over terms and conditions for workers after the rail company brought maintenance work back in-house four years ago.

RMT members voted by a margin of nearly three-to-one for a strike, which is due to finish today.

"We're expecting rock-solid support from our 12,000 maintenance members, not least because the company has turned a dispute about harmonisation into an attack on jobs and conditions," RMT general secretary Bob Crow said in a statement.

"If Network Rail wants to settle this dispute it should get round the table and negotiate a harmonisation package that is acceptable to our members," he said.

Unions end 8-week strike of 22,000 Danish nurses

Denmark's nurses' union has agreed to end a strike by 22,000 nurses at midnight yesterday after a nearly eight-week stoppage.

During the strike more than 372,000 treatments and operations were cancelled as nurses deman-ded a pay rise of 15 per cent over three years. Late on Friday the parties agreed on an increase of 13.3 per cent over the next three years. Denmark has universal healthcare, with nurses' pay the responsibility of local regions. The central government has throughout the strike refused to intervene in the conflict.

US Coast Guard rescues British charity rowers

Four Britons attempting to row across the Atlantic for charity have been rescued by the US Coast Guard after their boat capsised, British officials said.

The 29-foot boat of rowers Chris Jenkins, Tim Garrent, Wayne Davey and Joby Newton capsised 420 nautical miles east of Cape Cod early yesterday, while the men were in the boat's two cabins.

"The crew have been taken aboard the Gulf Grace at 8 a.m. - we understand all are relatively safe and well, but suffering slight hypothermia," British coastguards said in a statement. The Britons had been attempting to row from New York to the Isles of Scilly to try to break the record of 55 days set in 1896 by George Harboe and Frank Samuelson on a route that has only been successfully completed six times.

The four men, who had been expected to each burn around 10,000 calories a day rowing two hours on, two hours off, day and night, had raised nearly £75,000 for four different charities after leaving New York on June 1.

UK police arrest 29 environmental protesters

British police have arrested 29 environmental protesters who occupied a train carrying coal to Britain's biggest coal-fired power station, British Transport Police (BTP) said yesterday.

Disguised as railway workers in yellow warning jackets and waving red flags, 40 Camp for Climate Action protesters stopped the train on Friday at Snaith, just south of the Drax plant in Selby, North Yorkshire.

"The last person was removed from the train shortly after midnight," said British Transport Police in a statement.

Drax supplies seven per cent of the UK's electricity mostly from burning coal, and as a result is one of Europe's top five sources of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2), at four per cent of Britain's total emissions.

The environmental campaigners used an iron girder bridge and climbing equipment to scale the 12-foot high truck.

All 29, who are mainly from London and the south east and from Manchester, are in custody.

DNA link to Irish king is good for free drinks

Fancy a DNA test with your beer? If it turns up a positive link to an ancient Irish king, you get free drinks. Two Irish pubs in New York and Ireland are offering the test today in a Father's Day stunt designed to find descendants of Niall of the Nine Hostages, a 5th-century warlord.

Drinkers who take the test - a simple swab from the cheek that will be sent to Oxford for analysis - can claim free beer and a meal if they are found to be a descendant.

Researchers at Trinity College Dublin have found that as many as one in 12 Irish men could be descended from Niall, head of the most powerful dynasty in ancient Ireland and forefather of the O'Neills.

Cologne museum to show long Jewish ties

A new Cologne museum will show how Jewish life in the city goes back more than 1,700 years and, civic leaders hope, help revive it decades after the Holocaust.

An archaeological site from Roman times will be at the heart of the museum which the organisers also want to illustrate modern Jewish life and customs.

The strongly Catholic city, best known for its Gothic cathedral, claims to have the oldest Jewish community north of the Alps, dating back to at least 321, during Emperor Constantine's reign.

"This project is extremely important to show that Jews have been in Germany for as long as Christians - people in this country should be made more aware of that," Wilfried Rogasch, head of the project, told Reuters.

German architects Wandel Hoefer Lorch and Hirsch were to design the museum due to open in 2010 or soon thereafter. It is being financed partly by a private foundation and partly by the city.