内容摘要：for the first three months of the year. Profits plunged more than 70%, and the share price went down with it.

for the first three months of the year. Profits plunged more than 70%, and the share price went down with it.

A spokesperson for the Labour-run local authority said the bin collection service needed to be transformed "to one that citizens of Birmingham deserve"."We have made a fair and reasonable offer that we have asked Unite to put to their members and we are awaiting their response," they said.

The ballot was not a response to the latest offer made through the conciliation service Acas, they added.On-and-off strike action began on 6 January with, and the union began an indefinite all-out strike

Talks have been held under the chairmanship of Acas, but the dispute has remained in deadlock.UK law requires unions to reballot their members every six months to continue industrial action, meaning the current vote gives permission for strikes up until December.

Mountains of rubbish heaped up on the city's streets in March and April, and led to concerns over public health - at the same time there were queues of up to a mile at some mobile collection points as residents tried to get rid of their waste.

The city is currently affected by strike action five days a week, from Monday to Friday, continuously.They also made extensive use of a ground-penetrating radar, slowly pushing the device across the buildings' floors, looking for anomalies and cavities underneath.

The Portuguese fire brigade helped on the first day, pumping out an old well so it could be safely searched. The officers were looking for traces of Madeleine McCann, or some of her clothing.Every time I travel to Portugal for a new search it always begins optimistically. Could police find something this time? But on every occasion it quickly becomes apparent the searches are not tightly targeted. The police work always clearly based on quite vague intelligence - or just an investigator's hunch.

Luis Neves, the National Director of the Polícia Judiciária, the Portuguese equivalent of the FBI, said at the end of the week that, "nothing is in vain, not least because doors are being closed".As we watched the German detectives packing away it felt like the spring of hope of a resolution that had bubbled up in June 2020 was evaporating in the thankless heat.