| Victims win payout
Thousands of dying North East asbestos victims will at last get compensation. Former Washington Chemical Company workers have fought a long battle for compensation after they were exposed to deadly levels of asbestos during their working life. Today a £36m compensation cash pot, frozen for five years, has finally been made available. Former workers, many of whom suffer from mesothelioma, will now vote on the settlement to receive compensation within months. They have been offered roughly 60% of the total owed, with some claims running to £100,000. Claimants who did not work for the Washington Chemical Company but were exposed to asbestos because they lived near the factory are also expected to receive 20% of their compensation. .
Puzzling actions surround Hardie asbestos debacle
WINSTON Churchill described Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, which can also be applied to the developing debacle around the latest attempt to coax money from James Hardie for the victims of asbestos poisoning. The riddle is the Australian Tax Office's ruling that the new entity set up by James Hardie working title: Special Purpose Fund is not a charity, thereby threatening the December deal to keep money flowing to asbestos victims. The mystery is why this fund had to be set up. Why not use the existing charity, the Medical Research and Compensation Foundation, which has been channelling compensation to James Hardie's victims? And the enigma is: why do investors think James Hardie's liability to its victims has been capped and are optimistically bidding up its share price? It has not been capped; the liability each year is limited to 35 per cent of cash flow, but the time for paying it is open-ended, and on one assessment the potential future claims are equal to the company's entire intrinsic value.
Renouned Economist Louis Winnick Dead
Louis Winnick, an economist who helped guide the investments of the Ford Foundation and promoted low-income home ownership, has died. He was 85. Winnick died Saturday at a hospice in Manhasset, on Long Island. The cause of death was mesothelioma, a type of lung cancer that his daughter Pamela Winnick attributed to exposure to asbestos when he worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. Winnick was born in Romania and came to Brooklyn when he was one year old. He graduated from Brooklyn College and earned graduate degrees in economics at Columbia University. He worked for the New York City Planning Commission and the Housing and Redevelopment Board before joining the Ford Foundation in 1962. He served as deputy vice president in the national affairs division from 1968 to 1986. Winnick played a major role in the foundation's effort to channel resources into housing, community renewal and minority enterprise following the turbulence of the late 1960s.
Race for Life cash wanted now
BOLTON Race For Life organisers are urging women who took part in last week's event to get their money in as quickly as possible. Four thousand women a record number took part in this year's event, held at Leverhulme Park, and race organisers are hoping to beat last year's fund raising total of £178,000. So many women wanted to take part in the event which raises money for Cancer Research UK that three-miles races were held both in the morning and afternoon Holly Scholes, the Race For Life organiser, said: "Bolton's two Race For Life events were a tremendous success and we are extremely grateful to every single woman who took part. "We now need the women of Bolton to collect their sponsorship money and send it to us as quickly as possible to continue Cancer Research UK's life-saving research into ways to prevent, treat and cure cancer." Many of those taking part wore the names of loved ones who had survived cancer, or those who had lost their battle against the disease.
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