An elderly woman, believed to be in her 80s, died in a house fire on the east side of Detroit on Tuesday evening. While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, a spokesman for DTE Energy stated that the utility company had cut gas and electricity to the house in 2006. It has also been reported that she had no water, although this has yet to be confirmed.

It was the third deadly fire in a Detroit home without utilities since January. Earlier this month, three children perished in a fire on Bangor Street the same day that DTE cut the home’s unauthorized hookup to outside power lines. In January, two wheelchair-bound men and a friend died after fire consumed their Dexter Avenue home, which was also without gas and electricity.

The name of the woman who died on Tuesday evening was not officially released, but was reported as Anne Mazenka. Neighbors say she was unmarried and childless, and had lived in the same home on Charles Street since her youth. Though she was reclusive, neighbors helped her with yard work.

“We used to go and help her clean up her yard,” neighbor Carolyn Cummings told the World Socialist Web Site. “We helped out... so she didn’t have to come out because she was so old,” another neighbor, Jeff Kubiza, told a local news station.

The Citizens Inquiry into the Dexter Avenue House Fire is holding a press conference today, March 11, at 1:00 p.m. The conference is being held at 8011 Dexter Avenue in Detroit, MI [map], the scene of a January 5 fire that took the lives of three people.

The Socialist Equality Party initiated the inquiry in response to the Dexter fire, which killed two disabled brothers—Marvin Allen, 61, and Tyrone Allen, 62—along with Lynn Greer, 58. The blaze was sparked by a space heater connected to an unauthorized electricity hookup established after utilities had been shutoff at the home. (See “Citizens Inquiry into the Dexter Avenue Fire: Utility Shutoffs and the Social Crisis in Detroit”)

Since January, several more have been killed in similar fires. On Tuesday, a blaze in a home on Detroit’s east side took the life of an elderly woman. She had been living without heat or electricity since 2006, and, according to initial press reports, possibly without running water as well. (See “Elderly woman dies in Detroit house fire”)

On March 2, three children perished in a fire at a home on Bangor Street, where DTE Energy had disconnected the gas and electricity only hours earlier. The areas in which these tragedies have occurred are marred by poverty, unemployment and the absence of adequate social services.

US corporations are beginning to release figures on CEO pay for last year. Multi-million dollar packages are the norm in a year that saw the continued deterioration in the living conditions of the vast majority of the population.

Each of the top five executives at Wells Fargo at least doubled their compensation last year over 2008. The five men each received over $11 million in 2009, while Wells Fargo’s chief executive, John Stumpf, took home $21.3 million, far higher than his 2008 package of $8.8 million.

Mark Oman, the head of consumer business for Wells Fargo, nearly quadrupled his previous pay package to $13.5 million. Howard Atkins, the chief financial officer, received $11.6 million. The other Wells Fargo executives who received huge payouts were David Carroll, the head of the brokerage unit ($14.3 million), and David Hoyt, the head of wholesale banking ($13.5 million).

In December 2009, Wells Fargo announced that it would repay the $25 billion it received from the government as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Like other banks, Wells Fargo has sought to repay its TARP assistance as quickly as possible in order to escape compensation restrictions put on banks that received “extraordinary assistance.”

On Wednesday, the Kansas City, Missouri, School District’s (KCMSD) board will vote on superintendent Dr. John Covington’s plan to close 26 of the district’s 61 schools, eliminating 700 jobs, including 285 teaching positions.

With the full backing of the local corporate and political establishment, and in line with the policies set forth by Obama and his education secretary, Arne Duncan, Covington is also proposing a sweeping attack on teachers’ working conditions, including longer school days, merit pay and other punitive “performance-based” schemes.

Despite efforts to muzzle popular opposition, thousands of parents, students and school employees have attended meetings over the last two months to protest the school closings and other attacks on public education. When the board announced the closing of Knotts and Pinkerton elementary schools, the crowd shouted out “No!” in unison and drowned out what the speaker had to say.

A spate of fatal house fires has occurred in Detroit since the beginning of the year, the majority of which have claimed victims who had their electrical and gas service cut off by the utility giant DTE Energy.

The tragedies—including a January 5 fire on Dexter Ave. that killed two disabled men and a third resident, and a March 4 blaze on Bangor Street, which claimed the lives of three small children—occur as city officials are outlining plans to force residents out of poor neighborhoods and bulldoze their houses in order to eliminate sewerage, public lighting, fire protection and other services to whole swaths of the city.

Meanwhile, the mayor is continuing to gut basic services to the population. The Detroit Free Press reported Monday that Mayor David Bing’s administration is “exploring consolidating the city’s health and human services department, closing the Herman Kiefer health complex and shuttering all but two Neighborhood City Halls,” in order to save $2 million a year.

The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) voted March 2 to send layoff notices to more than 5,200 workers. These included 2,000 elementary school teachers, 2,370 certified management employees, 321 secondary teachers and teachers in the arts, and 574 support personnel, including counselors, psychologists, nurses and librarians. The district is facing a $640 million budget gap.

The LAUSD is required by law to notify teachers at least six months in advance of the next school year of any possibility they will lose their jobs, even if not all employees are ultimately fired. Just under a year ago the school board approved 5,400 layoff notices for teachers, janitors, counselors and administrators. While federal stimulus monies were able to minimize losses to a certain extent, in the end 2,000 educators and staff lost their jobs.

In taking this action, Los Angeles is following a statewide trend. Just recently, San Francisco sent out 900 layoff notices, while the city of Long Beach sent out 755.

On March 4, tens of thousands of students and workers demonstrated in opposition to education cuts throughout the United States.

The largest marches were held in California, where state and local governments have pushed through a 32 percent increase in fees for many college students, along with deep cuts in K-12, community college and university education funding. This month, tens of thousands of teachers in the state will receive notices that they could be laid off by the fall.

The demonstrations are an initial manifestation of growing anger and resistance to the policies of the corporate and financial elite. Their significance extends far beyond California. The same agenda of cost cutting is being imposed throughout the country, spearheaded by the Obama administration. Obama has publicly supported the mass firing of teachers and is blackmailing states into expanding charter schools and into carrying out other attacks on public education.

The March 4 demonstrations were not simply student demonstrations; they reflect a developing movement in the working class. As the San Diego rally marched through downtown, hundreds of working class students from local high schools joined in, as did many local workers, who left their houses and workplaces to join the demonstration.

Detroit area media and city and state authorities have launched a witch-hunt against Sylvia Young, the mother of three young children who died in a March 2 house fire on Bangor Street on Detroit's west side.

The basic facts of the case are not in dispute. Energy giant DTE Energy cut off unauthorized gas and electricity hook-ups to the house earlier in the day. Electrical power was soon reactivated, evidently by order of the landlord, who left Young with a faulty and dangerous space heater. As temperatures dropped toward freezing, Young went to purchase new space heaters. While she was gone a fire consumed the house, killing her children Tro’vion Young, five, Fantasia Young, four and Selena Young, three. Her 12-year-old son Tywon was able to rescue three siblings, including an infant who he tossed from a window to neighbors below.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education announced on Thursday a list of 35 so-called underperforming schools, where the jobs and contracts of teachers are directly threatened.

That same day in Boston, the state capital, Mayor Thomas Mennino and Superintendent Carol R. Johnson announced that teachers at six “underperforming” city schools would be forced to reapply for their jobs, and that five school principals would be reassigned to different positions.

The moves follow the February 23 firing of all 74 teachers and 19 other staff members at a public high school just over the Massachusetts border in Central Falls, Rhode Island. School Superintendent Frances Gallo carried out the wholesale firings at Central Falls High School after teachers rejected demands to work extra hours without pay.

The mass firings of the Central Falls teachers were based on the Obama administration’s national strategy to deal with 5,000 of the nation’s “failing schools,” located overwhelmingly in impoverished working class areas.