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FORT LAUDERDALE, FL – For the second time in five years, the U.S. Department of Labor has found a Winter Haven contractor allowed employees to do roof work without adequate protection exposing workers to falls, one of the construction industry’s deadliest hazards.            The department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspection found that at an Ave Maria residential jobsite in January 2024, Carpenter Contractors of America Inc. willfully exposed employees to a 32-foot fall hazard as they did not require fall protection equipment for employees securing trusses and roof facia. OSHA has proposed $161,323 in penalties.“Falls from elevation kill more construction…

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This weekend’s global IT outage caused by a software update gone wrong highlights the interconnected and often fragile nature of modern IT infrastructure. It demonstrates how a single point of failure can have far-reaching consequences. The outage was linked to a single update automatically rolled out to Crowdstrike Falcon, a ubiquitous cyber security tool used primarily by large organisations. This caused Microsoft Windows computers around the world to crash. CrowdStrike has since fixed the problem on their end. While many organisations have been able to resume work now, it will take some time for IT teams to fully repair all…

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Wes Streeting met staff and patients on visit to Heatherwood Hospital, Ascot The site is helping tackle backlogs of planned operations with dedicated surgical services Secretary of State also met with regional health leaders at ‘town hall’ event Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting underlined his mission to cut NHS waiting lists as he visited staff and patients at Frimley Health NHS Foundation Trust’s Heatherwood Hospital in Ascot today (Friday). Mr Streeting toured the Berkshire hospital to see first hand how its work is helping patients get quicker access to planned surgery, cutting local waiting lists. The Health and…

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In partnership with the National Institute of Statistics – INS, the United Nations Migration Agency (International Organisation for Migration – IOM) conducted a pilot survey to assess the multi-sectoral needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Centre region of Cameroon. The aim of this data collection was to provide government actors and the humanitarian community with precise information on the cross-sectoral needs of displaced populations in this region. The aim was to guide policy decisions and optimise the humanitarian response by providing a comprehensive overview of the difficulties faced by IDPs in the central area. As part of this…

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A massive IT outage is currently affecting computer systems worldwide. In Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, reports indicate computers at banks, media organisations, hospitals, transport services, shop checkouts, airports and more have all been impacted. Today’s outage is unprecedented in its scale and severity. The technical term for what has happened to the affected computers is that they have been “bricked”. This word refers to those computers being rendered so useless by this outage that – at least for now – they may as well be bricks. The widespread outage has been linked to a piece of software called CrowdStrike…

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Lengthy prison sentences have been imposed on five Just Stop Oil activists for coordinating direct action on the M25, the main ring road around London. For a non-violent protest, there is no equivalent in modern times. The five years for Roger Hallam and four years for the remaining four: Daniel Shaw, Louise Lancaster, Cressida Gethin and Lucia Whittaker de Abreu, have been widely condemned as grossly disproportionate. According to one snap poll, 61% of the public consider the sentences too harsh. But nobody should be surprised: these sentences are a logical outcome of Britain’s authoritarian turn against protest over the…

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Just a year out from the British and Irish Lions tour to Australia, the July internationals have helped put some players into the spotlight for a possible call-up.  Lions selection always throws up the odd curve-ball. Be that Sam Simmonds’ selection for the 2021 tour to South Africa despite not playing for England for two years previous, Marcus Smith and Christian Wade being hauled into the squad in 2021 and 2013 respectively after only making their Test debuts that summer, Martin Johnson’s call-up in 1993 or even Jason Robinson’s in 2001. Andy Farrell’s squad will likely be picked on individual’s…

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YouthBuild grants fund pre-apprenticeship programs to prepare young people for workforceWASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor today announced the availability of $99 million in funding to support the delivery of pre-apprenticeships in high-demand industries including construction, clean energy, healthcare, infrastructure, information technology and hospitality.The YouthBuild Program grants provide academic support, occupational skills training and employment services to young people, ages 16 to 24, in communities where they face persistent barriers to academic and career skills development. In alignment with the Biden-Harris administration’s Investing in America agenda, the program leverages the administration’s historic federal investments to help create good jobs and support a…

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The European Commission’s spokesperson service said: “We are aware of the media reports on the cyber incidents that have affected various sectors in EU member states and worldwide.” It added that its own services were not affected. Users on a subreddit (a forum-like thread on aggregation site Reddit) of cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike also flagged outages. After that, the Windows crashes were linked to Crowdstrike’s Falcon platform, which fends off cyberattacks. Microsoft acknowledged that it experienced two nonrelated issues: one on its cloud platform Azure, and another related to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. “We are aware of [an] issue affecting a subset…

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After Orbán’s visits with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, which he did not coordinate with the EU’s 26 other national leaders, many foreign ministers have been looking for a way to avoid becoming props in what they believe could be another Orbán propaganda show. The European Commission even announced it would hold its own foreign ministers’ summit in August instead of traveling to Budapest for Orbán’s event. But the boycott will not affect the EPC summit in November — which takes place just two days after the United States presidential election, in which Orbán’s ally Donald…

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