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World in brief November 12 2019

NORTHERN IRELAND: Unison members in health and social services have voted 92 per cent in favour of strike action over pay and staffing.

The union said waiting lists and waiting times for patients across Northern Ireland were now at “crisis level.”

Regional secretary Patricia McKeown said: “Health workers do not take industrial action lightly, but they have been pushed to the brink.  Responsibility for averting this critical situation lies with the Department of Health, the head of the NI Civil Service and the Department of Finance.”

ITALY: Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi declined to testify yesterday at the appeal trial of an adviser and ally who was convicted of collusion with the mafia.

Ex-senator Marcello Dell’Utri, who founded the Forza Italia party with Mr Berlusconi, was convicted last year of collusion between Cosa Nostra and state institutions after deadly mafia bombings in Florence, Rome and Milan in 1993. Mr Berlusconi became prime minister for the first time a year later.

He told the court his lawyers had advised him not to any answer any questions on those matters.

SPAIN: Hundreds of supporters of Catalan independence have forced the closure of a major road crossing the border with France.

Yesterday’s sit-down protest halted traffic along stretches of the road in southern France and northern Spain as demonstrators sat in the road, listened to music and ate food that they had brought with them.

Police on each side of the border stayed at a distance.

France’s Vinci Autoroutes said that there had been closures in both directions on the A9 since the morning.

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