All regional Mayors in England will come together in 10 Downing Street this morning (Tuesday 9 July) to begin the process of shifting power out of Westminster through a major programme of devolution that will power up all corners of the country. In their first roundtable, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister will continue putting into practice the commitment for a reset in relationships between central and regional governments, focusing on public service, respect and collaboration. Leaders will come together to discuss a new partnership approach and agree early actions needed to scale up devolution and empower regions to…
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The United States is announcing a second $2 billion Foreign Military Financing direct loan agreement with Poland today. Poland is a stalwart U.S. Ally, and this deal will further strengthen NATO’s Eastern Flank. Poland is undertaking a major military modernization program, including purchases of U.S. defense equipment such as F-35 aircraft, Patriot missile systems, and Abrams main battle tanks. Poland is a leader in NATO, currently spending four percent of GDP on defense, the highest in the Alliance. Poland hosts thousands of U.S. and Allied forces, including U.S. V Corps Headquarters (Forward) in Poznan. The U.S. government is providing up…
Since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the world has seen an incredible surge in investment, development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) applications. According to one estimate, the amount of computational power used for AI is doubling roughly every 100 days. The social and economic impacts of this boom have provoked reactions around the world. European regulators recently pushed Meta to pause plans to train AI models on users’ Facebook and Instagram data. The Bank of International Settlements, which coordinates the world’s central banks, has warned AI adoption may change the way inflation works. The environmental impacts have…
When Washington, D.C., last hosted a NATO summit in 1999, the alliance was celebrating a milestone. It was also facing a war in Europe and welcoming new members to the alliance. So there will be a certain feeling of déjà vu in the American capital when leaders from 32 nations meet starting July 9, 2024, to discuss the state of the alliance as it turns 75. Yet the scale of the challenges that NATO faces today, both within and without the organization, dwarfs what it confronted as it commemorated its 50th anniversary in 1999. The war in Ukraine has now…
Starting July 10, nationals from Botswana and South Africa will need to obtain a visa first, before travelling to Ireland, the Irish Department of Justice has announced. From the same date, Batswana and South Africans will also be subject to a transit visa when intending to transit through Ireland to another destination, Schengen.News reports. Confirming the new changes, the Minister for Justice of Ireland, Helen McEntee, said that the “carefully considered decision” will bring Ireland into closer alignment with the Schengen zone, in respect of both these countries, and also in line with the United Kingdom in respect of South…
In 2020, Pew Research Center launched a new project called the National Public Opinion Reference Survey (NPORS). NPORS is an annual, cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults. Respondents can answer by paper, online or over the phone, and they are selected using address-based sampling from the United States Postal Service’s Computerized Delivery Sequence File. The response rate to the latest NPORS was 32%, and previous years’ surveys were designed with a similarly rigorous approach. NPORS estimates are separate from the American Trends Panel (ATP) – the Center’s national online survey platform. Pew Research Center launched NPORS to address a limitation that researchers observed in…
Supporters of Joe Biden and Donald Trump differ on many political values, from views of immigration and gender identity to opinions about the government’s role and social safety net programs. Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand voters’ views related to economic issues in the context of the 2024 election. For this analysis, we surveyed 8,709 adults, including 7,166 registered voters, from April 8 to April 14, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses.…
The drills are a response to the “West’s aggressive foreign policy towards Belarus” and to “Ukrainian provocation,” said Vladimir Kupriyanyuk, the deputy head of the general staff of the Belarus armed forces, at a Friday press briefing. Belarus has been one of Russia’s closest allies following its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, providing logistical support and air bases but not troops to join the fighting. The exercises kick off on the eve of the July 9-11 NATO summit in Washington. The gathering will focus on aid to Ukraine, defense production and defense budget targets. Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said last week…
In March 2002, the Larsen B Ice Shelf collapsed catastrophically, breaking up an area about one-sixth the size of Tasmania. In a paper published today in Scientific Reports, we used nearly 1,000 film photographs of Antarctica from the 1960s to reconstruct exactly what five glaciers were like decades before the Larsen B Ice Shelf collapse. This allowed us to precisely calculate their contribution to sea-level rise. Although Antarctica is far away, and changing conditions there may seem distant, the changes can have a profound effect for us all. The removal of an ice shelf can cause glaciers to rapidly melt…
High-street travel company went into liquidation in 2019. Official Receiver has realised assets including flight slots, hotel investments and former shops. Creditors urged to visit dedicated website to confirm their position. The Official Receiver has announced plans to return £280 million to creditors of the Thomas Cook group of companies, the high-street travel chain which went into liquidation in 2019. Following the collapse of the Thomas Cook group of companies, the Official Receiver has worked hard across a complex group of liquidations to realise all available assets for the benefit of creditors. This has included a broad range of…