The latest annual rough sleeper snapshot survey recorded 12 people sleeping rough in Norwich on a single night.
While this is an increase from last year’s figure of five, it remains in line with the national average of 8.2 rough sleepers per 1,000 people. Despite the challenges, Norwich City Council continues to work closely with partners to provide support and accommodation for those at risk of rough sleeping, ensuring that help is available to those who need it.
The annual rough sleeper snapshot survey coordinated by central government encourages local authorities to do a rough sleeper count on a single night of the year, which goes into a government report to establish trends and make recommendations.
This year, 12 individuals rough sleeping in Norwich were identified on the night of the annual count. While this marks an increase from last year’s figure of 5, it is important to highlight the substantial progress made in preventing homelessness among vulnerable groups and supporting individuals with complex needs.
Of the 12 individuals found rough sleeping on the night of the count none were asylum seekers, refugees, or had been evicted and 9 were already known to us. Moreover, all were offered accommodation. Unfortunately, due to the complexities of these individuals some declined the offer of accommodation. Two weeks after the count six of the nine known to us are now safely in secure accommodation.
Councillor Beth Jones, the council’s cabinet member for housing, said: “While the numbers may have risen, the underlying story reflects a city committed to addressing homelessness. Each person rough sleeping has been offered support, and the absence of asylum seekers, refugees, or those recently evicted highlights the preventative work we are doing. This work ensures that people do not remain on the streets and have pathways to recovery and stability.“
The reasons for homelessness remain multifaceted, with contributing factors such as mental health issues, addiction, relationship breakdowns, and unemployment. We continue to prioritise a person-centred approach, supported by strong partnerships with housing, health, and community organisations. Over the past year, significant progress has been made, including the launch of a Making Every Adult Matter (MEAM) role within the Pathways Norwich outreach service to tackle the barriers faced by individuals with complex needs. Additionally, funding has been secured to help people entrenched in rough sleeping to transition from the streets into other supported accommodation options.
The rough sleeper team at Norwich City Council and the Pathways Norwich Consortium work hard all year around to ensure rough sleeping is prevented wherever possible, and where it does occur it is rare, brief, and non-recurring.
Residents are encouraged to report sightings of rough sleepers through Street Link.
By working together, Norwich can continue to tackle rough sleeping effectively, ensuring everyone has access to safe and stable housing.
Headline: Huawei Li Peng: Maximizing 5G Network Value in the Age of AI
Mar 03, 2025
[Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025] At MWC Barcelona 2025, Li Peng, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales & Service, delivered a keynote on how carriers can make the most of AI to fully unleash the value of their networks. Li predicts that symbiosis between 5G-A and AI technologies will stimulate double-digit growth in both DOU (data of usage) and ARPU (average revenue per user) from mobile subscribers.
“We’re rapidly entering a fully intelligent world. Intelligent applications are spreading everywhere, placing new demands on networks,” said Li. “By embracing and evolving 5G, we can unlock the infinite potential of mobile networks. Huawei is willing and ready to work with carriers and industry partners around the world to promote digital enablement, reinforce network foundations, and bring AI to all. Together, we can shape the D.N.A. for an intelligent world.”
AI is changing human-machine interaction, driving different requirements for latency
With advancements in AI, HMI (human-machine interaction) is evolving from simple text-based communications to voice, gestures, and more multi-modal interactions. As a result, HMI is more real-time and convenient than ever, giving rise to a new wave of innovative applications. For example, people can interact more naturally with their devices using AI-powered voice assistants. On cloud phones, AI-powered avatars can provide visual feedback as well, creating a more personal experience for services like health monitoring, making the mobile experience far more accessible and productive for different groups of users.
To support applications like these, however, networks need to be able to provide guaranteed latency, which will require ongoing evolution from 5G NSA, to 5G SA, and eventually 5G-A. Carriers can also adopt innovative technologies like CUPS (Control and User Plane Separation) and GBR (Guaranteed Bit Rate) to reduce basic latency and ensure differentiated, deterministic latency for specific scenarios.
AI-enabled content production and distribution is raising the bar for upload & download speeds
Li went on to note that AI will transform how content is produced and distributed. For example, AIGC technology makes it possible to generate hour-long 2D and 3D videos with a single click. Meanwhile, AI recommendations are more targeted than ever, allowing the distribution of more personalized content to broader audiences across the Internet. Both of these trends will cause network traffic to surge over the next five years, placing unprecedented demands on networks. To keep up, carriers will need more spectrum, greater network capacity, and much larger uplink and downlink bandwidth.
Diverse AI services will need experience-centric network coverage
Both AI-powered cloud and mobile devices are making intelligent services more accessible, and the industry will see growing demand for experience-centric network coverage. According to third-party data, cloud phones and cloud drives will be used by over one billion people by 2030, each of whom will need fast access to cloud computing power. In addition, intelligent in-vehicle applications will require full coverage across cities, highways, and the countryside to provide a continuous and reliable mobility experience.
Moving forward, meeting these demands will require ongoing progress in network deployment, from rapid expansion of 5G NSA networks to 5G SA networks for a more seamless indoor/outdoor experience, and eventually to experience-centric 5G-A networks. This will help carriers expand network coverage and ensure a smooth experience for tens of billions of new connections for people, and hundreds of billions of new IoT connections between things.
Growing network complexity will drive evolution towards application-oriented O&M
AI will bring more complex application scenarios and a more diverse range of experience requirements. From a networking perspective, this will drive a shift from traditional, resource-oriented O&M to a more application-oriented approach.
Some carriers are already developing O&M systems based on AI agents. For operations enablement, these AI agents can use digital twins to predict personalized needs for individual users, helping shorten service time-to-market from days to minutes. For network maintenance, AI agents with self-learning capabilities can predict and locate faults in seconds, increasing troubleshooting efficiency by 30%. And for network optimization, digital sandboxes can simulate the traffic of real-world applications, allowing AI agents to analyze traffic patterns and optimize networks 24/7 based on application needs.
Early-movers are scaling up 5G-A deployment to boost monetization in the age of AI
“New network capabilities will give rise to new business models,” continued Li. “Carriers can go beyond monetizing traffic and start monetizing experience itself.”
Right now, carriers around the world are actively exploring new ways to monetize experience based on multiple factors like speed, latency, and VIP benefits. They have launched custom services for business travelers, live streamers, and AI cloud phone users. And some are already expanding into the B2B2C market by exposing network capabilities through Open APIs.
For example, Chinese carriers are working with over 100 industries, including insurance and catering companies, to provide AI New Calling services through Open APIs. This has helped them increase income from industry customers by a factor of 10.
“The opportunities are huge,” concluded Li. “And the time to act is now. Pioneers are already scaling up fast in over 200 cities around the world. They’re taking solid steps forward, unlocking incredible new value.”
MWC Barcelona 2025 is held from March 3 to March 6 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
In 2025, commercial 5G-Advanced deployment will accelerate, and AI will help carriers reshape business, infrastructure, and O&M. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to accelerate the transition towards an intelligent world.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2025
Headline: Huawei’s Yang Chaobin: AI-Centric Network Solution Helps Carriers Seize AI Opportunities
[Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025] At the Huawei Product & Solution Launch during MWC Barcelona 2025, Yang Chaobin, Huawei’s Director of the Board and CEO of the ICT Business Group, launched the company’s AI-Centric Network solution.
According to Yang, the emergence of high-quality, low-cost, and open-source AI models will give rise to a wide range of new innovation in applications and accelerate the advent of an intelligent world.
Advancements in AI will transform society at three levels. It will enable a truly individualized experience for consumers, drive intelligent collaboration in organizations, and lay the groundwork for more inclusive intelligence for everyone.
Yang Chaobin, Huawei’s Director of the Board and CEO of the ICT Business Group, speaking at the Huawei Product & Solution Launch
As for the ICT industry, while evolving technology and a more diverse range of application scenarios will create unprecedented growth opportunities, they will also raise the bar for network infrastructure. To make the most of these opportunities, carriers need to make sweeping breakthroughs in network bandwidth, latency, coverage, and O&M.
“Huawei’s AI-Centric Network solution is designed to address these needs,” said Yang. “It revolutionizes network capabilities to enable all-domain connectivity. It will power a shift towards application-oriented O&M, and will reshape telecom service and business models to take full advantage of new opportunities presented by AI.”
AI-centric networks – A four-layered approach
Yang expanded on the challenges carriers face moving forward, explaining how Huawei’s solution can help them better prepare for a surge of new AI-powered applications.
All-domain connectivity. With more in-depth collaboration between AI and networks, carriers will be able to optimize resource orchestration for routing, bandwidth, and so on. This will provide intelligent applications with universal network access, ultra-high uplink and downlink, and SLA assurance.
Application-oriented O&M. Advances in AI applications will give rise to more complex service scenarios and massively diverse experience requirements. This will necessitate a shift from traditional, resource-oriented network O&M to a more application-oriented approach. Huawei’s Telecom Foundation Model supports predictive and proactive O&M, experience optimization based on application-level awareness, and tailored, more fine-grained operations. Carriers will be able to significantly enhance the efficiency of network O&M while taking user experience to entirely new levels.
Enhanced AI-to-X services. At the individual user level, AI-centric networks can deliver the right experience for different AI scenarios by assigning the exact levels of bandwidth, latency, and reliability needed. At the organizational level, they can break through bottlenecks in capacity and response times configured for person-to-person interactions, evolving networks to support person-to-agent and even agent-to-agent interactivity. And at the societal level, AI-centric networks will enable ubiquitous connectivity to speed up AI adoption in public services like education and healthcare, providing more inclusive value for communities around the world.
Innovative business models. Finally, different experience requirements will give carriers the opportunity to explore new business models that monetize a broader range of metrics. Essentially, AI-centric networks will allow carriers to go beyond traditional traffic-based monetization and start monetizing experience itself. This will unleash the full potential of connectivity and open up new revenue streams.
“We need to join hands and work together across the telecom industry,” Yang Chaobin concluded. “By exposing network capabilities, collaborating with different industries, and engaging in scenario-specific innovation, we can make the most of new growth opportunities in the age of AI, and bring the world one step closer to a brighter, more intelligent future.”
MWC Barcelona 2025 is held from March 3 to March 6 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
In 2025, commercial 5G-Advanced deployment will accelerate, and AI will help carriers reshape business, infrastructure, and O&M. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to accelerate the transition towards an intelligent world.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2025
Headline: Huawei Li Peng: Maximizing 5G Network Value in the Age of AI
[Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025] At MWC Barcelona 2025, Li Peng, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales & Service, delivered a keynote on how carriers can make the most of AI to fully unleash the value of their networks. Li predicts that symbiosis between 5G-A and AI technologies will stimulate double-digit growth in both DOU (data of usage) and ARPU (average revenue per user) from mobile subscribers.
“We’re rapidly entering a fully intelligent world. Intelligent applications are spreading everywhere, placing new demands on networks,” said Li. “By embracing and evolving 5G, we can unlock the infinite potential of mobile networks. Huawei is willing and ready to work with carriers and industry partners around the world to promote digital enablement, reinforce network foundations, and bring AI to all. Together, we can shape the D.N.A. for an intelligent world.”
AI is changing human-machine interaction, driving different requirements for latency
With advancements in AI, HMI (human-machine interaction) is evolving from simple text-based communications to voice, gestures, and more multi-modal interactions. As a result, HMI is more real-time and convenient than ever, giving rise to a new wave of innovative applications. For example, people can interact more naturally with their devices using AI-powered voice assistants. On cloud phones, AI-powered avatars can provide visual feedback as well, creating a more personal experience for services like health monitoring, making the mobile experience far more accessible and productive for different groups of users.
To support applications like these, however, networks need to be able to provide guaranteed latency, which will require ongoing evolution from 5G NSA, to 5G SA, and eventually 5G-A. Carriers can also adopt innovative technologies like CUPS (Control and User Plane Separation) and GBR (Guaranteed Bit Rate) to reduce basic latency and ensure differentiated, deterministic latency for specific scenarios.
AI-enabled content production and distribution is raising the bar for upload & download speeds
Li went on to note that AI will transform how content is produced and distributed. For example, AIGC technology makes it possible to generate hour-long 2D and 3D videos with a single click. Meanwhile, AI recommendations are more targeted than ever, allowing the distribution of more personalized content to broader audiences across the Internet. Both of these trends will cause network traffic to surge over the next five years, placing unprecedented demands on networks. To keep up, carriers will need more spectrum, greater network capacity, and much larger uplink and downlink bandwidth.
Diverse AI services will need experience-centric network coverage
Both AI-powered cloud and mobile devices are making intelligent services more accessible, and the industry will see growing demand for experience-centric network coverage. According to third-party data, cloud phones and cloud drives will be used by over one billion people by 2030, each of whom will need fast access to cloud computing power. In addition, intelligent in-vehicle applications will require full coverage across cities, highways, and the countryside to provide a continuous and reliable mobility experience.
Moving forward, meeting these demands will require ongoing progress in network deployment, from rapid expansion of 5G NSA networks to 5G SA networks for a more seamless indoor/outdoor experience, and eventually to experience-centric 5G-A networks. This will help carriers expand network coverage and ensure a smooth experience for tens of billions of new connections for people, and hundreds of billions of new IoT connections between things.
Growing network complexity will drive evolution towards application-oriented O&M
AI will bring more complex application scenarios and a more diverse range of experience requirements. From a networking perspective, this will drive a shift from traditional, resource-oriented O&M to a more application-oriented approach.
Some carriers are already developing O&M systems based on AI agents. For operations enablement, these AI agents can use digital twins to predict personalized needs for individual users, helping shorten service time-to-market from days to minutes. For network maintenance, AI agents with self-learning capabilities can predict and locate faults in seconds, increasing troubleshooting efficiency by 30%. And for network optimization, digital sandboxes can simulate the traffic of real-world applications, allowing AI agents to analyze traffic patterns and optimize networks 24/7 based on application needs.
Early-movers are scaling up 5G-A deployment to boost monetization in the age of AI
“New network capabilities will give rise to new business models,” continued Li. “Carriers can go beyond monetizing traffic and start monetizing experience itself.”
Right now, carriers around the world are actively exploring new ways to monetize experience based on multiple factors like speed, latency, and VIP benefits. They have launched custom services for business travelers, live streamers, and AI cloud phone users. And some are already expanding into the B2B2C market by exposing network capabilities through Open APIs.
For example, Chinese carriers are working with over 100 industries, including insurance and catering companies, to provide AI New Calling services through Open APIs. This has helped them increase income from industry customers by a factor of 10.
“The opportunities are huge,” concluded Li. “And the time to act is now. Pioneers are already scaling up fast in over 200 cities around the world. They’re taking solid steps forward, unlocking incredible new value.”
MWC Barcelona 2025 is held from March 3 to March 6 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
In 2025, commercial 5G-Advanced deployment will accelerate, and AI will help carriers reshape business, infrastructure, and O&M. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to accelerate the transition towards an intelligent world.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2025
Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Tina Lüdecke, Leader of the Emmy Noether Group for Hominin Meat Consumption (HoMeCo), Max Planck Institute For Chemistry
Goodboy Picture Company/Getty Images
For decades, scientists have been learning more about the diets of early hominins, particularly their reliance on plants. Yet we still don’t know when these ancestors of humans started eating meat.
This is a frustrating gap in our understanding of human evolution. We think regular meat consumption was one of the main drivers of brain growth and evolution in hominins, because animal products are calorie-dense and easier to digest than unprocessed plant foods. They also contain all the essential amino acids and are rich in biologically important nutrients, minerals and vitamins.
What we do know is that by the time our genus, Homo, emerged over two million years ago, hominins were regularly eating meat. This is clear from their increased reliance at this point on stone tools to butcher and process meat products. We’ve also found fossil bones with cut marks that indicate butchering.
But that doesn’t explain when and where regular meat eating started and which species of our ancestors made that crucial shift.
Now, thanks to fossilised tooth enamel, we’re a step closer to an answer. In a study with several other co-authors, we measured nitrogen isotopes in the enamel from fossilised teeth belonging to the hominin genus Australopithecus, discovered in South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves. This is one of the oldest known human ancestor species.
Atoms of the same element can have different versions, called isotopes, which have the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons. This makes them slightly heavier or lighter but chemically similar. For example, nitrogen has two stable isotopes: nitrogen-14 (¹⁴N) and nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N). These occur naturally, but their ratio varies in nature. In food webs, nitrogen isotopes become enriched as you move up the chain, meaning predators have higher ¹⁴N/¹⁵N ratios than herbivores.
Identifying these isotopes is a way to reconstruct ancient diets and ecosystems, helping scientists understand how past environments shaped the survival of species – including early humans.
We also tested the isotopic signature of animals that lived in the ecosystem at the same time. We saw that the isotopic signature of Australopithecus was low – similar to that of herbivores.
Our findings suggest that these ape-like, small-brained early hominins were eating mostly plants. There was little to no evidence of meat consumption. They may have snacked on the occasional egg or insect but they were not regularly hunting large mammals like Neanderthals did millions of years later.
A toothy approach
One of us (Dr Lüdecke) began working with fossilised tooth enamel during her PhD. The focus was on measuring stable carbon isotopes in the enamel as a way to uncover the plant-based part of an extant or extinct animal’s diet.
This approach reveals whether a species relied on lush, leafy plants or hardy, grass-like vegetation in African savanna ecosystems. But there was always that small, unsatisfying sentence in the discussion section of her academic papers: “This dataset cannot inform about the meat portion of the diet.”
Then inspiration struck. The co-authors of the latest study, Alfredo Martínez-García and Daniel Sigman, had developed a method with their teams to measure nitrogen isotopes in marine microfossils – tiny creatures that, like fossilised tooth enamel, contain almost no organic material.
When these results aligned with what we expected in terms of their known diets, we knew we had a reliable tool. After more laboratory testing, method tweaking and checking, we felt ready to analyse the fossilised tooth enamel of non-primate fauna found in one of the oldest fossil-bearing deposits of South Africa’s Sterkfontein Caves. This deposit, Member 4, formed about 3.4 million years ago, during the Late Pliocene period.
Again, these analyses gave us the expected results: it was clear at the isotopic level whether we were dealing with the teeth of a herbivore or a carnivore.
Then we finally sampled seven Australopithecus molars from Member 4 to uncover whether these ancient hominins, which lived and died around the Sterkfontein Caves about 3.4 million years ago, were sinking their teeth into meat or sticking to a largely vegetarian menu.
By comparing the nitrogen isotope ratios of these early hominins with those of other animals from the same ecosystem – like antelopes, monkeys and carnivores – we found that the isotopic signature of Australopithecus was low, similar to that of herbivores.
Future plans
This discovery is just the beginning. We’re now expanding our research to other fossil sites across Africa and Asia, hoping to answer bigger questions. When did meat truly enter the hominin diet? Which species of hominins through our evolution consumed meat? Did the behaviour emerge several times and did it coincide with the rise of larger brains, or marked changes in behaviour, like new stone tool technology? And what does this mean for how we understand the evolutionary path that led to our species?
Tina Lüdecke receives funding from the German Research Foundation Emmy Noether Fellowship (LU 2199/2-1). She is affiliated with the Emmy Noether Group for Hominin Meat Consumption, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (Mainz, Germany) and the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa).
Sterkfontein fieldwork is supported by South African governmental platforms DSI-NRF and NRF African Origins Platform, and long-term project and student support from GENUS and PAST.
Interest rate reductions on the Court Funds Office special and basic accounts: 3 March 2025
Reduction of interest rates for Court Funds Office special and basic accounts from today (3 March 2025).
In response to the decrease in the Bank of England base rate on 6 February 2025, the Court Funds Office (CFO) rates of interest payable to clients have been reviewed and from 3 March 2025 these will change to the following:
Special Account – decreased from 4.75% to 4.50%
Basic Account – decreased from 3.56% to 3.38%
The decision was made to ensure that the running costs of the CFO service can continue to be met whilst still providing an affordable rate of interest payable to clients.
If you wish to discuss further, please contact the CFO on 0300 0200 199 or email enquiries@cfo.gov.uk.
Salford City Council confirm a return to MIPIM this year.
MIPIM (in French, Le Marché International des Professionnels de L’immobilier) is held in Cannes, France and is internationally recognised as a key property and investment event.
Attendance at MIPIM provides a platform for the council to meet investors and showcase the development opportunities in Salford.
Salford City Council team will form part of Greater Manchester partnership in attendance
The Salford team confirmed for the conference as Jack Youd, Deputy City Mayor and Lead Member for Finance, Support Services and Regeneration, John Searle, Executive Director Place, Stephanie Mullenger, Interim Director Property and Housing, and Sarah Ashurst, Head of Partnerships and Investment.
Salford City Deputy Mayor Jack Youd heads up a team of senior officers from Salford City Council attending this year’s MIPIM event.
The team’s focus will be once again raising the profile of the city and positioning Salford as an innovative, forward-thinking city on a global stage. There’ll be opportunities to highlight the unique growth potential and the range of current regeneration projects in scope across the city.
Heading out to Cannes, France from 11-14 March for the event, presents the team with the chance for the team to meet with developers and public sector officials from cities and regions across the world.
Jack Youd, Deputy City Mayor and Lead Member for Finance, Support Services and Regeneration, said:
“As always, MIPIM presents an important opportunity for the city and as a first-time attendee I’m excited to experience everything the event has to offer.
Salford City Council is committed to placemaking which delivers for the existing residents of Salford and for people looking to live, work and play in our city. This vision is set out in our Corporate Plan and builds on the good growth and regeneration which has been vital to our success as a city. The connections made and developed at MIPIM are central to achieving our goals.
We need to continue to build the profile of the city further and ensuring potential investors and partners have Salford in the forefront of their minds.”
Salford City Council has long identified MIPIM as an important opportunity to share the city’s regeneration story and highlight the city’s vision for the future with those who have the potential to help deliver and achieve it.
This year, again there’s plenty to for the team to be highlighting. Salford has experienced significant growth and investment in recent years, and this is now having a positive knock-on effect. Investment attracts further investment and leads to future development opportunities throughout the city.
Current priorities include the new ambitious visions for the town centre redevelopment of Eccles and Swinton and the upcoming Strangeways and Cambridge Strategic Regeneration Framework. The new emerging Mayoral Development Zone at the Western Gateway, future plans at MediaCity and the importance of affordable social housing through Derive all present opportunities for developers and investors.
The key objectives for attending MIPIM are: raising the city’s profile on an international stage; highlighting the exciting development opportunities on the horizon; making those connections with potential developer partners.
The Salford City Council team is:
Jack Youd, Deputy City Mayor and Lead Member for Finance, Support Services and Regeneration
Jack was elected in 2021 to represent Walkden North ward also serving as the election agent for the directly elected City Mayor, Paul Dennett.
On election Jack was made the Executive Support for Procurement and Social Value, overseeing a large increase in the number of Foundation Living Wage accredited employers in Salford. In 2022 Jack was promoted to the Lead Member for Finance and Support Services.
In 2024, Jack was appointed to the position of Deputy City Mayor and added the Property and Regeneration portfolio to his roles and responsibilities. Jack also substitutes for the City Mayor at Greater Manchester Combined Authority, sits on the Greater Manchester Economy Board and Greater Manchester Pension Fund.
Jack is also chair of the Board of Directors of Salford Credit Union and has been a non-executive director on SCU for ten years.
John Searle, Executive Director Place
John has 25 years’ experience in the public and private sector in economic development and physical regeneration across Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Merseyside with direct experience of implementing urban regeneration schemes and commercial property development. John joined Salford in November 2021 and is responsible for regeneration, property, development and investments, planning and building control, highways and technical services, operational services and employment and skills. This involves a gross revenue budget of over £90m and a capital programme of over £100m for 2022/23.
He is currently overseeing Salford’s ambitious growth plans to deliver 40,000 new jobs and homes by 2040 by building on the city’s four strategic growth locations (City Centre Salford, Salford Quays and MediaCity, Greater Manchester Western Gateway, including Port Salford and Salford’s Town Centres).
John previously worked for 15 years at Rochdale Council/Rochdale Development Agency on the £400m investment programme in Rochdale Town Centre, the development of the 420-acre Kingsway Business Park and the GM Spatial Framework proposal known as Northern Gateway.
Stephanie Mullenger, Interim Director Property and Housing
Steph has been working in Property since she was 16 and started as an estate agent in London. She completed her and RICS qualifications whilst working and has been involved with all aspects of the industry across all asset types and in several different countries.
She moved to the Northwest from London in 1997 and has over 25 years’ director and board level industry experience with a track record of success in developing multi-site retail, office leisure and residential estates and award winning, high performing teams.
She has worked for the Co-op, London Regional Transport, Global property Consultants, Banks and locally has been MD for Manchester Airport Group Property and Urban Splash. She also ran for ten years my own successful property consultancy before joining Salford City Council in 2023.
In March 2024, Steph was appointed as the Interim Director of Property and Housing.
Sarah Ashurst, Head of Partnerships and Investment, Salford City Council
Sarah has extensive experience of delivering the city’s regeneration ambitions during her time working for the council.
She leads a team of officers with on focus on driving the growth of the city, working with a range of public and private sector development partners, funding agencies, Greater Manchester partners and international investors and has a portfolio covering the whole of the city.
Full programme with Salford attended panel sessions
Tuesday 11 March
Place North Stand
8.30am Welcome from Northern Local Authorities
Featuring: Stephanie Mullenger, Interim Director Property and Housing.
The Manchester Stand
10.30am Place based sustainable growth: How the Manchester city region is unlocking and supporting development
Featuring John Searle, Executive Director, Place
The Manchester Stand
2.30pm Two cities and a river: Strangeways Strategic Regeneration Framework
Featuring Jack Youd, Deputy City Mayor and Lead Member for Finance, Support Services and Regeneration
MIPIM UK Stage
3pm Faster, bigger, better – How can the North become the UK’s development driver?
Featuring John Searle, Executive Director, Place
Wednesday 12 March
Canopy by Hilton
8am Place North MIPIM Breakfast Conference
Featuring John Searle, Executive Director, Place
Thursday 13 March
The Manchester Stand
2pm Beyond Old Trafford: Exploring wider regeneration opportunities in Trafford and Salford
Featuring Jack Youd, Deputy City Mayor and Lead Member for Finance, Support Services and Regeneration
Left to right: Basel Adra, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham pose with their Oscars for ‘No Other Land’ at the 2025 Academy Awards.Maya Dehlin Spach/Getty Images
For many low-budget, independent films, an Oscar win is a golden ticket.
The publicity can translate into theatrical releases or rereleases, along with more on-demand rentals and sales.
However, for “No Other Land,” a Palestinian-Israeli film that just won best documentary feature at the 2025 Academy Awards, this exposure may not translate into commercial success in the U.S. That’s because the film has been unable to find a company to distribute it in America.
“No Other Land” chronicles the efforts of Palestinian townspeople to combat an Israeli plan to demolish their villages in the West Bank and use the area as a military training ground. It was directed by four Palestinian and Israeli activists and journalists: Basel Adra, who is a resident of the area facing demolition, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor. While the filmmakers have organized screenings in a number of U.S. cities, the lack of a national distributor makes a broader release unlikely.
Film distributors are a crucial but often unseen link in the chain that allows a film to reach cinemas and people’s living rooms. In recent years it has become more common for controversial award-winning films to run into issues finding a distributor. Palestinian films have encountered additional barriers.
As a scholar of Arabic who has written about Palestinian cinema, I’m disheartened by the difficulties “No Other Land” has faced. But I’m not surprised.
The role of film distributors
Distributors are often invisible to moviegoers. But without one, it can be difficult for a film to find an audience.
Distributors typically acquire rights to a film for a specific country or set of countries. They then market films to movie theaters, cinema chains and streaming platforms. As compensation, distributors receive a percentage of the revenue generated by theatrical and home releases.
The film “Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat,” another finalist for best documentary, shows how this process typically works. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024 and was acquired for distribution just a few months later by Kino Lorber, a major U.S.-based distributor of independent films.
The inability to find a distributor is not itself noteworthy. No film is entitled to distribution, and most films by newer or unknown directors face long odds.
So why can’t “No Other Land” find a distributor in the U.S.?
There are a couple of factors at play.
Shying away from controversy
In recent years, film critics have noticed a trend: Documentaries on controversial topics have faced distribution difficulties. These include a film about a campaign by Amazon workers to unionize and a documentary about Adam Kinzinger, one of the few Republican congresspeople to vote to impeach Donald Trump in 2021.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, of course, has long stirred controversy. But the release of “No Other Land” comes at a time when the issue is particularly salient. The Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and the ensuing Israeli bombardment and invasion of the Gaza Strip have become a polarizing issue in U.S. domestic politics, reflected in the campus protests and crackdowns in 2024. The filmmakers’ critical comments about the Israeli occupation of Palestine have also garnered backlash in Germany.
Yet the fact that this conflict has been in the news since October 2023 should also heighten audience interest in a film such as “No Other Land” – and, therefore, lead to increased sales, the metric that distributors care about the most.
Indeed, an earlier film that also documents Palestinian protests against Israeli land expropriation, “5 Broken Cameras,” was a finalist for best documentary at the 2013 Academy Awards. It was able to find a U.S. distributor. However, it had the support of a major European Union documentary development program called Greenhouse. The support of an organization like Greenhouse, which had ties to numerous production and distribution companies in Europe and the U.S., can facilitate the process of finding a distributor.
By contrast, “No Other Land,” although it has a Norwegian co-producer and received some funding from organizations in Europe and the U.S., was made primarily by a grassroots filmmaking collective.
Stages for protest
While distribution challenges may be recent, controversies surrounding Palestinian films are nothing new.
Many of them stem from the fact that the system of film festivals, awards and distribution is primarily based on a movie’s nation of origin. Since there is no sovereign Palestinian state – and many countries and organizations have not recognized the state of Palestine – the question of how to categorize Palestinian films has been hard to resolve.
In 2002, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences rejected the first ever Palestinian film submitted to the best foreign language film category – Elia Suleiman’s “Divine Intervention” – because Palestine was not recognized as a country by the United Nations. The rules were changed for the following year’s awards ceremony.
In 2021, the cast of the film “Let It Be Morning,” which had an Israeli director but primarily Palestinian actors, boycotted the Cannes Film Festival in protest of the film’s categorization as an Israeli film rather than a Palestinian one.
Film festivals and other cultural venues have also become places to make statements about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and engage in protest. For example, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017, the right-wing Israeli culture minister wore a controversial – and meme-worthy – dress that featured the Jerusalem skyline in support of Israeli claims of sovereignty over the holy city, despite the unresolved status of Jerusalem under international law.
Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev wears a dress featuring the old city of Jerusalem during the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. Antonin Thuillier/AFP via Getty Images
At the 2024 Academy Awards, a number of attendees, including Billie Eilish, Mark Ruffalo and Mahershala Ali, wore red pins in support of a ceasefire in Gaza, and pro-Palestine protesters delayed the start of the ceremonies.
As he accepted his award, “No Other Land” director Yuval Abraham called out “the foreign policy” of the U.S. for “helping to block” a path to peace.
Even though a film like “No Other Land” addresses a topic of clear interest to many Americans, I wonder if the quest to find a U.S. distributor just got even harder.
This article has been updated to clarify that the film was a collaborative effort between Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers. It has also been updated to reflect the film’s win at the 2025 Academy Awards.
Drew Paul does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Holocaust is fast receding from living memory. Some 300 Auschwitz survivors were present at the 70th anniversary commemorations of the camp’s liberation in 2015. This year, just 50 attended, all of whom were children in 1945.
Even before this generation began to pass on, researchers of the Holocaust had begun to study the ways that memory of these events have been shaped, manipulated, or indeed fabricated. Film scholar Alison Landsberg’s influential concept of “prosthetic memory” focused attention on the ways in which film, literature and other art forms can supplement or even substitute for the experiences of those who lived through historical events.
Approaching the moment when such supplements must become the sole means for future generations to understand the Holocaust, it seems no accident that half a dozen films released in 2023 and 2024 made Holocaust memory – and its complexities – an explicit element of their narratives.
Three of these films incorporate scenes filmed on location in Poland at former Nazi death camps. Perhaps the most unexpected example is The Zone of Interest (2023). A brief documentary sequence filmed at the modern-day Auschwitz museum concludes director Jonathan Glazer’s meticulous (though highly stylised) recreation of the idyllic domestic life of camp commandant Rudolf Höss and his family.
It’s the only sequence that crosses the otherwise impermeable boundary separating the Höss family compound from the camp itself. It might be interpreted as a kind of reality check for the audience – a reminder that yes, this all did really happen. But that seems an improbably ingenuous stance for so intelligent a filmmaker.
More plausibly, the sequence is a reflexive extension of the film’s interrogation of the strategies by which atrocity can be held at arm’s length, or “managed”.
Höss (Christian Friedel) and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) manage this by fabricating a “perfect” bourgeois home, while ignoring the constant soundtrack of barked orders, shots and screams from the other side of their garden wall.
As we watch them, we are naturally appalled and repelled by their callous dissociation. Yet in the contemporary Auschwitz sequence, Glazer asks whether modern habits of Holocaust “consumption” don’t risk an all-too-similar disavowal.
Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.
In the museum sequence we see Polish cleaners at work, wiping down the glass of the vitrines in which the infamous heaps of shoes and human hair are displayed, and mopping the floor of the Auschwitz I gas chamber (itself a postwar reconstruction).
This site of unimaginable violence is now a museum where the material evidence of mass murder is carefully preserved and curated for tourists. Perhaps not altogether unlike a historical recreation such as The Zone of Interest.
‘Managing’ Holocaust memory
Tourists are the protagonists of Treasure (2024), directed by Julia von Heinz, and A Real Pain (2024), written and directed by Jesse Eisenberg.
These films centre on survivors and their descendants travelling to modern Poland, ostensibly to commemorate their destroyed families. But it seems that, perhaps inevitably, more pressing and immediate personal issues override these acts of remembrance.
A Real Pain, for example, centres on two cousins, dutiful family man David (Eisenberg) and mercurial, possibly bipolar Benji (Kieran Culkin). The pair join a “Holocaust tour” in honour of their late grandmother, a Polish-Jewish survivor, including a visit to Maidanek.
Clip from A Real Pain.
Dutifully and sombrely, the cousins view the barracks, the gas chamber and the vast pile of human ashes. Afterwards, however, only Benji lapses into inconsolable sobs. Is his grief an authentic reaction to the horror, a mark of his greater emotional connection? Is it histrionically excessive, performative attention-seeking? Or is it that the unfathomable tragedy of European Jewry allows Benji to access his own private agony.
If it’s the latter, is such an appropriation of the Holocaust somehow an “illegitimate” response? According to whom? Eisenberg’s deft traumedy leaves it up to us to decide.
Yet more ambiguous is the epilogue to Brady Corbett’s acclaimed The Brutalist (2024). The film retrospectively interprets the professional career of its protagonist, fictitious Hungarian-Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor László Tóth (Adrian Brody) as a response to the tragedy.
Addressing the 1980 Venice Biennale, Tóth’s daughter declares that through his creations her father worked through the trauma of his experiences in the camps. A Holocaust memorial is among the designs briefly glimpsed in the display of Tóth’s work.
The trailer for The Brutalist.
The scene aptly captures the ways in which public discourses around the Holocaust crystallised from the 1980s onward.
In the immediate postwar period, as The Brutalist shows, the Holocaust was a rarely discussed, even shameful, topic outside of survivor communities. But with the onset of postmodernism, the Holocaust came increasingly to be understood as the defining episode in 20th-century European history, more even than the second world war itself.
The meanings of trauma
As all these films show, the ways that the Holocaust is commemorated today are far uncontested. For example, One Life (2023), the biopic of British rescuer Nicholas Winton, straightforwardly endorses mainstream assumptions about the value of remembrance.
By contrast, in the documentary The Commandant’s Shadow (2024), Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is almost dismissive of what she clearly sees as her daughter’s superfluous preoccupation with a past trauma best forgotten.
The Brutalist is more ambiguous still. At one level, traumatic memory may help explain Tóth’s difficult character and relationships in the preceding three hours of the film. Yet at the same time, almost nothing in his words or actions hitherto has suggested the Holocaust is his predominant focus. Nor does Tóth make this claim himself. Stricken mute following a stroke, he can only listen as his daughter offers this account of his work.
Is it true? Or is it imposing a neat, culturally approved meaning onto the complexities of a messy, damaged life?
Together, these films make a strong case that in the “post-testimony” era, we must not only keep remembering the Holocaust, but reflect constantly on how and why we do so.
Barry Langford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Washington Post still conjures up, for some, the promise of fiercely independent investigative journalism that can unseat a corrupt president. In what became one of the biggest stories of the 20th century, Richard Nixon (1969-74) was forced to resign the presidency in 1974, halfway through his second term, following an investigation by Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward.
After months of work the reporting team linked Nixon and his campaign staff to illegal donations, and to the bugging and sabotage of political opponents including a break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate building, Washington DC. Their work won a Pulitzer prize.
This kicked off decades of investigative journalism and breaking stories that has cemented the Post’s global reputation.
So the recent memo by billionaire owner of the Post, Jeff Bezos, declaring that the newspaper’s opinion section will now be restricted to pieces supporting “personal liberties and free markets” (and not opposing viewpoints) came as a shock not only to loyal liberal readers and to some journalists, but also to those who see the Post as a bastion of media freedom. Bezos said on X that differing opinions can be “left to be published by others”.
The decision by Bezos prompted the opinion editor David Shipley to resign and Elon Musk to tweet “Bravo, @JeffBezos!” The paper’s newly appointed economics reporter Jeff Stein also took to X to respond to Bezos’s tweeted memo by calling it a “massive encroachment” by his new boss.
He added: “I still have not felt encroachment on my journalism on the news side of coverage, but if Bezos tries interfering with the news side I will be quitting immediately and letting you know.” Some sources suggest that the Post has lost 75,000 digital subscribers since the decision was announced.
The trailer for the film All the President’s Men, based on reporting from the Washington Post.
To many the Post’s reputation was already becoming tarnished. Bezos rocked his readership back in October 2024 when he refused to endorse a candidate in the presidential election for the first time in 36 years.
According to the paper the decision led to 250,000 readers cancelling their subscriptions. Woodward and Bernstein said the decision “ignores the Washington Post’s own overwhelming reportorial evidence on the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy”.
And so it came as no surprise at Trump’s inauguration that Bezos could be seen seated prominently beside his fellow tech billionaires Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, X’s Elon Musk and Google’s Sundar Pichai.
But is all lost? The Washington Post has always had its share of bold and outspoken reporters and commentators and, on Friday, Post columist Dana Milbank wrote a strongly worded opinion piece in which he said that readers were worried that Bezos’s words, “are cover for a plan to turn this into a MAGA-Friendly outlet”.
He added: “If we as a newspaper, and as a country, are to defend [Bezos’s] twin pillars, then we must redouble our fight against the single greatest threat to ‘personal liberties and free markets’ today: Donald Trump.”
Jeff Bezos brings in new rules on what can and cannot be published in the Washington Post’s opinion pages.
Has this latest move by Bezos simply made clear an editorial position which is ordinarily inferred but not made explicit? Will reporters be free to conduct investigations into Amazon’s work practices while at the same time extolling free market objectives? As yet no one knows for sure.
Coverage changes?
In January the newspaper’s Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist, Ann Telnaes, resigned after the Post refused to publish a satirical cartoon of a group of tech and media billionaires (that included Bezos and Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg) laying bags of cash before a statue of Trump.
Telnaes described the refusal to publish as “dangerous for a free press”. Ironically it was David Shipley who claimed at the time that he had decided against publication due to “repetition”, rather than because the cartoon mocked Bezos.
Nevertheless, Post reporters have continued to focus national coverage on the wide-ranging effects of Trump’s executive orders, the sacking of senior military leaders and Doge’s culling of resources and jobs in the public sector. Neither has it escaped the new administration’s changes to media access.
On February 7 the Department of Defense announced the Post would be removed from its office in the Pentagon’s “Correspondents Corridor” along with CNN, plus the New York Times, NPR and NBC which were evicted earlier to make room for pro-Trump media organisations.
The Post today
In 2024, the Post took home three Pulitzer prizes for journalism, including one for David E. Hoffman “for a compelling and well-researched series on new technologies and the tactics authoritarian regimes use to repress dissent in the digital age, and how they can be fought”.
The past few years have been financially bruising for the paper and in 2023 the paper announced it had lost US$77 million (£69 million). In its latest round of cuts in January this year it laid off 100 employees.
Back when Bezos took over the paper in August 2013 the New York Times quoted a fellow tech entrepreneur, Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, as saying in a now prophetic line: “It used to be that in Silicon Valley we just built the platforms and someone else wrote the content. But that is changing. The lines have been blurred for a long time, and this is just another step in that process.”
Twelve years on the “broligarchy” may not be writing the content, but is it restricting it? In these uneasy times in Washington there appears to be a growing erosion of press freedom as the new administration moves to limit access to the White House for mainstream media such as the Associated Press in favour of pro-Trump media.
Whether the Post will come down on the side of press freedom or is banking on an eventual post-Trump bump to stem its declining sales is unclear.
Colleen Murrell received funding from Irish regulator Coimisiún na Meán (2021-4) for research for the annual Reuters Digital News Report Ireland.
Conclusion of UK presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance: Lord Pickles’ speech
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Chair Lord Pickles spoke about the UK’s achievements over the past year and handed over the presidency to Israel.
In February 1980, I first watched a sunrise over Jerusalem. Whenever I’ve returned to this wonderful city over the past 45 years, I still feel that feeling of warmth and wonderment.
As we stand at the Crossroads of Generations, there is no better place on Earth to draw together the future of remembrance.
The UK presidency aimed to bring out the best in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), engender confidence in difficult times, and, above all, to strengthen the organisation.
During our year, following a general election, Britain’s government changed from the Conservatives to Labour. There were many disagreements on political issues during the campaign, but there was complete unity on the need to fight antisemitism and to further Holocaust education and remembrance.
Both governments were clear that our presidency would put the interest of IHRA and remembrance before narrow national interest. I hope you agree that we have met those responsibilities.
Those of us who attended the poignant 80th-anniversary ceremony of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January know that we will never see the like again. Ten years from now, at the 90th anniversary, it is unlikely there will be Holocaust survivors to speak.
We are now the custodians of their memory. We must remember and tell the truth. We must uphold our founding document, the Stockholm Declaration, which is as relevant today as 25 years ago.
IHRA is a consensus organisation, which can be frustrating at times. But there is an upside – it requires the skills of listening and debate. IHRA is not a place for the repetition of prepared statements, it is a place where experts speak the truth to government.
One feature of the past year was bringing remembrance closer to local communities. The ‘My Hometown’ initiative asked young people to research what happened in their towns during the Holocaust. It showed them that history is not distant – it is personal.
The ‘Holocaust in 80 Objects’ project used artefacts to tell the stories of victims and survivors. It reminded us that the Holocaust is not just statistics – it is millions of individual interlocking lives.
Under our leadership, the IHRA-UNESCO Capacity Building Training expanded. It now includes diplomatic networks and embassy staff. Those shaping international discourse must understand the dangers of Holocaust distortion.
This work has left a lasting impact – embedding Holocaust memory into education, public policy, and diplomacy. The move to new technologies that allows memory preservation will ensure that future generations can still connect with survivor voices.
I hope Israel can build on the AI conference we hosted in London. We must unlock the potential of AI, if we don’t our opponents certainly will.
IHRA is the only international organisation focusing on Holocaust remembrance, education and research. That is worth holding on to. To remain relevant, we must be adequately resourced.
I am grateful that the Israeli presidency has pledged there will be proposals to make our finances sustainable when we meet in Jerusalem in June.
I wish Israel a successful presidency. With Dani at the helm and with the support of Ruty and Yossi, Richelle, and Rob Rozette, I look forward to 2025 with confidence.
Finally, I wish for 3 things. As the United Kingdom passes the flickering torch of Holocaust remembrance to Israel:
may its light shine bright over Jerusalem
may it illuminate the Crossroads of the Generations
The Mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council, Councillor Lilian Seenoi Barr, has announced the launch of a Young Person’s Bursary – a £500 contribution aimed at supporting the growth and development of one young person with a talent or skill they wish to nurture but who may lack the financial means to do so.
The bursary is open to young people across the entire Derry City and Strabane District Council area and is designed to offer a helping hand to someone from a low-income, socially disadvantaged, or vulnerable background. It could support the development of artistic abilities such as music or drama or help a young person build employability skills that will benefit their future.
Speaking at the launch, Mayor Barr expressed her enthusiasm for providing meaningful support to a young person with ambitions to grow and thrive. “The Young Person’s Bursary is a small but important contribution, a hand up to help a young person in our community develop their potential. Whether it’s a creative talent like music or drama or an employability skill they wish to strengthen, this bursary is about allowing them to build their confidence, enhance their abilities, and pursue their dreams. “Engaging with young people and giving them a voice has been a key focus of my Mayoral year, and I’m delighted to offer this support. While applications must come from organisations that support children and young people aged 0-18 years from disadvantaged backgrounds within the Derry City and Strabane District Council area, they must specifically nominate the individual young person who will benefit from the bursary. “Individual young people cannot apply directly but are encouraged to reach out to the organisations they are involved with to express their interest in being considered. Schools can also apply. I hope this bursary will empower the successful candidate to overcome challenges, build their skills, and become more actively involved in their local community.”
The Mayor has recorded a video message to invite young people to apply that can be viewed on her social media pages. For more information on the criteria and details on how to apply visit here The deadline for applications is Friday March 28th 2025.
A NATIONAL campaign is calling for people from the LGBTQ+ community to consider becoming foster carers or adoptive parents.
More children than ever require fostering or adoption in Leicester, and LGBTQ+ Adoption & Fostering Week, which launches today (3 March), celebrates the contribution of the LGBTQ+ community whilst also highlighting the possibilities for future foster carers or adopters.
Led by LGBTQ+ adoption and fostering peer support charity New Family Social and supported locally by Leicester City Council and Family Adoption Links Leicester, this year’s campaign aims to encourage more members of the LGBTQ+ community to consider fostering or adoption.
Despite members of the LGBTQ+ community already accounting for a high percentage of adopters and foster carers, there is still an urgent need for more people to come forward for both adoption and fostering in the city.
Family Adoption Links Leicester currently has 16 children awaiting adoption, and with over 600 children and young people in the care of Leicester City Council, the need to recruit foster carer households for some of the most vulnerable children in Leicester is vital.
One-year-old Archie is just one child in foster care awaiting an adoptive family. His social worker said: “Archie has the biggest smile and such a cheeky face, he is described as a dream to look after, a happy and bright baby who is very laid back.”
Many other children in Leicester are seeking short-term or long-term foster homes or adoptive families.
If you are hoping to grow your family through adoption or fostering, the city council holds regular information events where you can find out more. The next fostering event takes place tomorrow, 4 March, from 6pm-8pm. For more information and to book, please visit Leicester City Council Fostering | Eventbrite.
For adoption, there is an information event on Wednesday 5 March at 6.30pm. For more information, please visit www.familyadoptionlinks.org.uk.
Coventry is marking the Covid-19 National Day of Reflection on Sunday 9 March with a large pavement artwork, placed inside the Cathedral Ruins.
It will offer members of the public the opportunity to spend a moment of reflection on the impact of the pandemic on their families, the city, nationally and its devastating effect across the world.
The artwork will provide a beautiful, quiet space for private thoughts and shared experiences.
The installation will be unveiled by the Deputy Leader of Coventry City Council and other invited guests, including representatives from University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire (UHCW) NHS Trust, in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral.
Deputy Leader of Coventry City Council, Cllr Abdul Salam Khan said, “The pandemic affected all communities and residents, and as we always do in this city, we all stood together to support those who suffered at this challenging time.
“As a city we came together to reach out in any way we could to support vulnerable members of our community and anyone who needed help. I’m proud that the city played a leading role in the roll-out of the vaccines and the hope and support it provided to people during such a momentous time.”
“I hope this piece of art gives a place of peace and quiet reflection to anyone who feels they would like to come and have a few moments to reflect on what was a challenging and worrying time for us all.”
UHCW NHS Trust was awarded the Freedom of the City by the council in July 2022 as a thank you for the efforts of its staff in supporting Coventry through the pandemic, including delivering the world’s first Covid-19 vaccine in December 2020.
The pavement artwork will be in place for one day with the Cathedral Ruins being open during normal daytime opening hours of 10am to 4pm.
Local street artist, Katie O, has been commissioned to produce the artwork which will be secular and reflect the human experience of loss and the city’s role in tackling the pandemic.
Katie O, said: “I’m grateful for the opportunity to mark this important day. I think lockdown showed us how the arts can play a powerful part in connecting with people, our emotions and community. Showing compassion and empathy is an important gift to share. I hope the artwork speaks to people who lost loved ones, who struggled mentally, and physically, and reminds us we are united through our care and love for others.”
Later in the day, Coventry Cathedral will be conducting a themed Evensong at 4pm.
Sunday 9 March 2025 is a national Covid Day of Reflection.
People are invited to:
remember and commemorate those who lost their lives since the pandemic began
reflect on the sacrifices made by many, and on the impact of the pandemic on us all
pay tribute to the work of health and social care staff, frontline workers and researchers
appreciate those who volunteered and showed acts of kindness during this unprecedented time
The Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, today announced that Dennis King has been appointed as Canada’s next Ambassador to Ireland.
Mr. King is a proud Islander with a proven track record of public service. As Premier of Prince Edward Island, he helped drive progress on key priorities such as health care, education, economic development, and job creation. He also navigated the province through significant challenges, including natural disasters and the COVID‑19 pandemic.
Canada and Ireland are close friends and partners. As Ambassador, Mr. King will advance our shared priorities, including strengthening transatlantic security, growing our economies, reducing emissions, expanding trade and investment, and building a better future for people on both sides of the Atlantic.
Quote
“I congratulate Dennis King on his appointment as Canada’s Ambassador to Ireland. With his years of experience in public service, including as the Premier of Prince Edward Island, I am confident that he will serve Canada well and make the strong partnership between our two countries even stronger.”
Quick Facts
Canada is represented in Ireland by an embassy in Dublin. In Canada, Ireland is represented by an embassy in Ottawa and consulates in Vancouver and Toronto.
Over 4.4 million Canadians, or 12 per cent of the population, claim at least partial Irish ancestry, making Irish the third-largest ethnic group in Canada.
Headline: Huawei’s Yang Chaobin: AI-Centric Network Solution Helps Carriers Seize AI Opportunities
Mar 03, 2025
[Barcelona, Spain, March 3, 2025] At the Huawei Product & Solution Launch during MWC Barcelona 2025, Yang Chaobin, Huawei’s Director of the Board and CEO of the ICT Business Group, launched the company’s AI-Centric Network solution.
According to Yang, the emergence of high-quality, low-cost, and open-source AI models will give rise to a wide range of new innovation in applications and accelerate the advent of an intelligent world.
Advancements in AI will transform society at three levels. It will enable a truly individualized experience for consumers, drive intelligent collaboration in organizations, and lay the groundwork for more inclusive intelligence for everyone.
Yang Chaobin, Huawei’s Director of the Board and CEO of the ICT Business Group, speaking at the Huawei Product & Solution Launch
As for the ICT industry, while evolving technology and a more diverse range of application scenarios will create unprecedented growth opportunities, they will also raise the bar for network infrastructure. To make the most of these opportunities, carriers need to make sweeping breakthroughs in network bandwidth, latency, coverage, and O&M.
“Huawei’s AI-Centric Network solution is designed to address these needs,” said Yang. “It revolutionizes network capabilities to enable all-domain connectivity. It will power a shift towards application-oriented O&M, and will reshape telecom service and business models to take full advantage of new opportunities presented by AI.”
AI-centric networks – A four-layered approach
Yang expanded on the challenges carriers face moving forward, explaining how Huawei’s solution can help them better prepare for a surge of new AI-powered applications.
All-domain connectivity. With more in-depth collaboration between AI and networks, carriers will be able to optimize resource orchestration for routing, bandwidth, and so on. This will provide intelligent applications with universal network access, ultra-high uplink and downlink, and SLA assurance.
Application-oriented O&M. Advances in AI applications will give rise to more complex service scenarios and massively diverse experience requirements. This will necessitate a shift from traditional, resource-oriented network O&M to a more application-oriented approach. Huawei’s Telecom Foundation Model supports predictive and proactive O&M, experience optimization based on application-level awareness, and tailored, more fine-grained operations. Carriers will be able to significantly enhance the efficiency of network O&M while taking user experience to entirely new levels.
Enhanced AI-to-X services. At the individual user level, AI-centric networks can deliver the right experience for different AI scenarios by assigning the exact levels of bandwidth, latency, and reliability needed. At the organizational level, they can break through bottlenecks in capacity and response times configured for person-to-person interactions, evolving networks to support person-to-agent and even agent-to-agent interactivity. And at the societal level, AI-centric networks will enable ubiquitous connectivity to speed up AI adoption in public services like education and healthcare, providing more inclusive value for communities around the world.
Innovative business models. Finally, different experience requirements will give carriers the opportunity to explore new business models that monetize a broader range of metrics. Essentially, AI-centric networks will allow carriers to go beyond traditional traffic-based monetization and start monetizing experience itself. This will unleash the full potential of connectivity and open up new revenue streams.
“We need to join hands and work together across the telecom industry,” Yang Chaobin concluded. “By exposing network capabilities, collaborating with different industries, and engaging in scenario-specific innovation, we can make the most of new growth opportunities in the age of AI, and bring the world one step closer to a brighter, more intelligent future.”
MWC Barcelona 2025 is held from March 3 to March 6 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1.
In 2025, commercial 5G-Advanced deployment will accelerate, and AI will help carriers reshape business, infrastructure, and O&M. Huawei is actively working with carriers and partners around the world to accelerate the transition towards an intelligent world.
For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2025
Jeito Capital announces significant participation in $187 million Series A financing for Callio Therapeutics to advance innovative multi-payload ADC programs designed to maximize therapeutic benefit for cancer patients
Callio Therapeutics is a biotechnology company developing multi-payload ADCs with technology and programs exclusively in-licensed from Singapore-based Hummingbird Bioscience
Investment will contribute to achieve clinical proof-of-concept for Callio’s HER-2-targeted dual-payload ADC and a second undisclosed ADC program
Jeito’s investment reinforces its commitment to cutting-edge oncology innovations addressing treatment resistance and improving patient outcomes
Paris, March 3rd2025 – Jeito Capital (“Jeito”), a global leading independent Private Equity fund dedicated to biopharma, announced today its significant participation in the $187 million (€180.2 million1) Series A financing round in Callio Therapeutics (“Callio”), a newly launched biotechnology company focused on realizing the promise of multi-payload antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) to improve cancer therapy.
Callio Therapeutics was founded by Frazier Life Sciences to develop next-generation multi-payload antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) based on technology and programs exclusively in-licensed from Singapore-based Hummingbird Bioscience. The company is led by co-founder and CEO Piers Ingram, PhD, alongside a founding management team with deep expertise in ADC development bringing experience from leading biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies (including Hummingbird Bioscience, ProfoundBio, Silverback Therapeutics, SeaGen, Medarex, and Genentech).
The $187 million Series A financing was led by Frazier Life Sciences with significant participation from Jeito alongside an investment syndicate including Novo Holdings A/S Omega Funds, ClavystBio, Platanus, Norwest, Pureos Bioventures, SEEDS Capital and EDBI. The strength of this syndicate underscores the broad confidence in Callio’s innovative ADC platform and its potential to reshape cancer therapy.
Callio Therapeutics will use the proceeds from the Series A financing to achieve clinical proof-of-concept for its HER2-targeted dual-payload ADC and a second undisclosed ADC program, all designed to maximize therapeutic benefit for cancer patients by overcoming the limitations of single-payload therapies. By enabling the targeted delivery of rational drug combinations to tumor cells, Callio’s approach has the potential to significantly enhance efficacy and address resistance mechanisms.
Rachel Mears, Partner at Jeito will join Callio’s Board of Director as Board member.
Through this investment, Jeito reinforces its commitment to supporting transformative oncology innovations that address key resistance mechanisms in cancer treatment. Callio’s differentiated multi-payload ADC platform aligns with Jeito’s investment thesis of backing high-potential biopharma companies developing next-generation therapies with the potential for global leadership.
Dr Rafaèle Tordjman, MD, PhD, Founder and CEO of Jeito Capital said: “We are pleased to support Callio Therapeutics as it advances its differentiated multi-payload ADC platform to address some of the biggest challenges in oncology. As long-standing investors in this therapeutic area, we recognize the quality and potential of Callio’s approach to overcome resistance mechanisms and improve outcomes for patients with hard-to-treat cancers. At Jeito, we believe that strategic collaboration and bold innovation are key to accelerating the next generation of targeted therapies, and we look forward to working alongside the Callio team to bring these advances to patients in need. “
Rachel Mears, Parner at Jeito Capital added: “Callio is a highly innovative company that benefits from an experienced management team and deep expertise in oncology, where new therapies remain highly needed for those suffering from various forms of cancer.We look forward to collaborating with Callio’s team through our collective knowledge and expertise in both ADC and oncology with the ambition to go faster to patients with high unmet needs. “
Piers Ingram, PhD, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Callio Therapeuticsconcluded: “We are delighted to be launching Callio Therapeutics with this very strong syndicate of investors. Multi-payload ADCs have the potential toenable the targeted delivery of rational drug combinations to cancer cells, and may provide significantly enhanced efficacy.This new generation of ADC therapies may meaningfully improve outcomes for patients.”
About Jeito Capital Jeito Capital is a global leading Private Equity fund with a patient benefit driven approach that finances and accelerates the development and growth of ground-breaking medical innovation. Jeito empowers and supports managers through its expert, integrated, multi-talented team and through the investment of significant capital to ensure the growth of companies, building market leaders in their respective therapeutic areas with accelerated patients’ access globally, especially in Europe and the United States. Jeito Capital has €534 million under management and a rapidly growing portfolio of investments. Jeito Capital is based in Paris with a presence in Europe and the United States. For more information, please visit www.jeito.life or follow us on LinkedIn or X.
About Callio Therapeutics Headquartered in Seattle and Singapore, Callio Therapeutics is focused on realizing the promise of multi-payload antibody-drug conjugates to transform cancer patient outcomes. The company is developing next-generation, multi-payload antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) that feature differentiated payload and linker technologies that enable targeted delivery of multi agents to tumor cells to maximize therapeutic benefit. Callio Therapeutics’ lead program is a HER2-targeted dual-payload ADC. Callio Therapeutics was created by Frazier Life Sciences, a longstanding investment firm focused on innovative therapeutics, based on ADC technology and programs exclusively in-licensed from Hummingbird Bioscience. For more information , please visit www.calliotx.com and follow Callio Therapeutics on LinkedIn.
Contacts: Jeito Capital Rafaèle Tordjman, Founder & CEO Jessica Fadel, EA Tel: +33 6 33 44 25 47
Cegedim: Termination and implementation of a new liquidity contract
Boulogne-Billancourt, France, March 3, 2025
Cegedim (ISIN Code: FR0000053506) terminated the previous liquidity contract with Kepler Cheuvreux on February 28, 2025. As of that date, the following assets were booked to the liquidity account: •10,259 Cegedim shares •64,286.78 euros
Cegedim announces that it has entrusted Rothschild Martin Maurel with the implementation of a liquidity and market surveillance contract for its ordinary shares, with effect from March 3, 2025, and for a period of one year, tacitly renewable. This contract has been drawn up in accordance with current regulations, and in particular AMF Decision 2021-01 of 22 June 2021. It complies with the code of conduct of the Association Française des Marchés Financiers (AMAFI).
The purpose of this agreement is for Rothschild Martin Maurel to act as a market maker for Cegedim shares on the regulated market of Euronext Paris in order to promote the liquidity of transactions and the regularity of the listing of Cegedim shares.
The resources allocated to its implementation are: •10,259 Cegedim shares •64,286.78 euros
This contract will be suspended in the cases provided for in article 5 of the AMF Decision; or at the request of Cegedim for technical reasons (e.g., the counting of shares with voting rights before a general meeting or the counting of shares with dividend rights before the coupon is detached) for a period defined by Cegedim.
About Cegedim: Founded in 1969, Cegedim is an innovative technology and services group in the field of digital data flow management for healthcare ecosystems and B2B, and a business software publisher for healthcare and insurance professionals. Cegedim employs nearly 6,700 people in more than 10 countries and generated revenue of over €654 million in 2024. Cegedim SA is listed in Paris (EURONEXT: CGM). To learn more please visit: www.cegedim.fr And follow Cegedim on X: @CegedimGroup, LinkedIn, and Facebook.
Aude Balleydier Cegedim Media Relations and Communications Manager
Dynamic Manta builds on the success of previous iterations, incorporating new tactics, technologies and operational insights, ensuring NATO’s forces remain at the forefront of undersea warfare. The exercise prepares NATO submarine crews to respond and adapt to any type of threat below the surface.
Hosted by Italy, the exercise was planned by NATO Allied Maritime Command (MARCOM) based in Northwood, UK. Commander Submarines NATO, US Navy Rear Admiral Bret Grabbe, said this is the largest and most complex submarine exercise to take place in the Mediterranean Sea.
“Exercises like Dynamic Manta help NATO maintain the edge when it comes to anti-submarine warfare,” he said. “By practising coordinated operations against both conventional and advanced undersea threats, NATO continues to demonstrate its commitment to safeguarding the strategic waterways that connect member states.”
For only the third time since the exercise began in 2013, submarine assets will also work with Allied maritime Special Operations Forces (SOF), consolidating interoperability with this critical asset. The capability of Allied SOF teams to cooperate with Allied submarines from different nations represents a force multiplier for NATO. For this iteration of the exercise, a Greek SOF team will make a landing from an Italian submarine to conduct its mission.
The aim of Dynamic Manta is to provide all participants with complex and challenging warfare training to enhance interoperability and proficiency in anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare skills. Each participating unit will have the opportunity to conduct a variety of submarine warfare operations. The submarines will take turns hunting and being hunted, closely coordinating their efforts with the air and surface participants.
The exercise plan to involve units, sailors and airmen from nine NATO nations.
The submarines belong to the navies of France, Greece, Italy, Türkiye and the United States, with NATO Submarine Command (COMSUBNATO) exercising operational control on several, as required by the exercise scenario.
Maritime Patrol Aircraft (MPA) from Canada, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Türkiye, the United Kingdom and the United States are also planning to take part, alongside Maritime Patrol Helicopters (MPH) from France, Italy and the US, supported by surface ships from Greece, Italy, Spain, Türkiye and the US.
Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2) is taking part, commanded by Turkish Navy Rear Admiral H. Ilker Avci.
As the host nation, Italy is providing support in Catania and Augusta Harbors, the naval helicopter base in Catania, Naval Air Station Sigonella, as well as support from Augusta Naval Base.
Representing Italy during the exercise as the host nation guest is Rear Adm. Alberto Tarabotto, Commanding Officer, 4th Naval Division.
There are two sister ASW training events as part of NATO’s continuous submarine warfare training and cooperation. Exercise Dynamic Mongoose which takes place in the cold waters of the North Atlantic, and Playbook Merlin which takes place in the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea.
Dynamic Manta is one of nearly a dozen MARCOM-led maritime exercises held each year in addition to numerous national exercises, which increase readiness in defense of the Alliance.
Source: Traditional Unionist Voice – Northern Ireland
Every year since the Madrid bombings in 2004 across Europe one day in March has been set aside as a Memorial Day to the victims of terrorist attacks. Following his election to the Assembly Jim Allister hosted events at Stormont to mark the occasion. His successor as TUV MLA for North Antrim, Timothy Gaston, is continuing the tradition.
Over the years, there have been highly successful events attended by victims of Republican and Loyalist terrorism from across Northern Ireland, Great Britain, the Republic and continental Europe.
This year’s event to mark European Day for Victims of Terrorism will be held in the Senate Chamber in Parliament Buildings at 11am on Monday 10th March with refreshments available from 10:30am.
The press are very welcome to attend.
Timothy Gaston explained:
“The event will take the form of a minute of silence in memory of murdered victims, followed by three victims telling their stories so that we might hear some of the untold accounts of the consequences of terrorism, both republican and loyalist.
“I believe this will be a worthwhile effort and in previous years I received very positive feedback from those who attended. It is but right that one of the regions of Europe most savagely ravaged by terrorism should mark this important day. I am pleased that we will hear from a cousin of Dougald McCaughey, one of the three Scottish soldiers murdered in particularly brutal circumstances in on 10th March 1971 meaning the event will take place on the anniversary of these brutal murders.
“I am thankful for the South East Fermanagh Foundation and Ulster Human Rights Watch for making this event possible and for Assembly colleagues Mike Nesbitt and Patsy McGlone without whose co-sponsorship this event would not be taking place”.
This year’s event will include contributions from four speakers. Their details are provided by SEFF and UHRW.
1. Caroline D’Eath Daughter of Gerald D’Eath 22nd May 1975
Gerald was a 31-year-old Roman Catholic civilian murdered by a UVF bomb. He was married with four children and a machine operator who was from, Braeside in Dungannon.
Gerald had been working on the building site of a new Christian Brothers school for several months and died on the site when a UVF bomb exploded. He was working as a bricklayer at the time.
Pics provided by the family:
Gerald D’Eath with his daughters before his death.
Second picture is with his loving late wife Margaret.
2. David McCaughey
Cousin of Dougald McCaughey who was murdered by Provisional IRA terrorists alongside John and Joseph McCaig
Three Scottish soldiers – 10th March 1971
The soldiers were unarmed members of the 1st Battalion, Royal Highland Fusiliers. Dougald McCaughey, 23, was murdered along with brothers John, 17 and Joseph McCaig, 18 respectively. All three men were from Scotland.
They were murdered when off-duty and in civilian clothes, having been lured from a city-centre bar in Belfast, driven to a remote location, and shot.
Family, former colleagues, and friends of the three Scottish soldiers continue to fight for justice for three young men, who were much loved by many, David is a key driver in The Three Scottish Soldiers campaign group.
3. Pamela Wilson Daughter of Const. David Dorsett RUC GC 14th January 1973
David Dorsett and Mervyn Wilson who were murdered by Provisional IRA terrorists.
David was 37-years-old and originally from Wolverhampton and had served in the Royal Navy and the Bristol Constabulary.
In 1967, he joined the RUC. His wife was from Londonderry. It was his son’s 8th birthday on the day he was murdered. He also had a 10-year-old daughter and an 8-month old baby girl.
A bomb exploded beneath their car on Harbour Square.
Both officers were serving with the force’s Traffic Branch and had been stationed at the nearby Victoria RUC station.
Two other police officers who were in the car were also injured.
4. Colette Murray
Colette Murray was aged 47 years when her brother Cyril was shot dead by Loyalist terrorists on the 8th of July 1992 in the family home where they both had lived for 29 years. Their late parents and two other siblings had lived there with the latter both moving out on getting married. Cyril and Colette had put the house up for sale and were in the process of moving to a new bungalow in Randalstown which they were having built and which was ready for occupation ten days after the incident.
Cyril Murray was a law-abiding citizen who had taught in a primary school in Belfast. He was well regarded in educational circles as an inspirational teacher and many past pupils had fond memories of him.
The terrorists later stated it was a case of mistaken identity.
Two individuals were later convicted and sentenced. As a result of the 1998 Belfast Agreement these individuals would only have served a minimum of 4 years and a maximum of 8 years for their heinous crimes.
Residents in Bushbury and surrounding areas will have the new community shop on their doorstep after it’s relocation from Low Hill Community centre. Anyone in the city will be able to reduce the cost of their weekly shop by popping in for a wide range of food from fresh fruit and vegetables to store cupboard items and fresh bread.
It’s the latest community shop to join the city wide network, which also includes the flagship shop and Pomegranate Café at the Queen’s Building in Victoria Square in the city centre.
Shoppers can save a lot of money every week on groceries by using the community shops instead of major supermarkets.
The council helped create the shops with an initial investment from the government’s Household Support Fund and provides on-going support, but they are run day to day by staff and volunteers at community centres and hubs.
Leader of the City of Wolverhampton Council, Councillor Stephen Simkins said he was glad the council had been able to work with the community to create this new shop.
‘These shops are for everyone who lives in Wolverhampton and have already helped many residents across the city save so much money on their weekly food bills over the last few years.
‘The council is committed to the future of community shops, as they really do offer a way for people to do the best for their families in these difficult times. They also help our local economy, which helps everyone in the city in the long-term.
‘This is just one of the many ways as a council we’re trying to help our citizens deal with the on-going challenges of the high cost of living. Food remains the number one item in regards to cost of living, with which residents need our help.’
Kim Payne, WV10 Consortium Partnership manager said: ‘Opening a community shop here at Fifth Avenue will be a fantastic source of support for local people that will complement other services provided here at the community centre by Bushbury Hill Estate Management board and WV10 Consortium.
‘Please drop by and see what’s on offer, we’ll have plenty of fresh produce and seasonal deals as well as every day essentials for healthy and tasty meals.’
For more information visit WV10 Consortium and for more details about other community shops across the city and other cost of living support available from the council check out our web pages.
Pocket to Plate is another key project the council developed to help residents provide nutritious and tasty food for themselves and their families on a budget.
Community chefs Prince and Simon, who both work out of Fifth Avenue, also join forces with self-taught cook and tiktok star Mitch Lane every Thursday to release new recipes and how to cook them as part of Pocket to Plate.
Follow @pocketoplate now on Instagram, tiktok and youtube to view the latest and keep an eye out for them using produce from the shop to inspire your next home-cooked meal.
KIRKLAND, Wash., March 03, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Alliance Memory will display its expanded product portfolio at Embedded World 2025, taking place March 11-13 at the Nuremberg Exhibition Centre in Nuremberg, Germany. In Stand 3A-215, the company will introduce its new 32Mb fast SRAM, DDR4 and LPDDR4X SDRAMs, and high-density Serial NOR Flash devices, all of which enhance device performance with higher density, low power consumption, and rapid data transfer rates to meet the needs of modern applications.
“Our latest offerings underscore our commitment to meeting the evolving needs of the market with memory solutions that boost efficiency and reliability,” said David Bagby, president and CEO of Alliance Memory. “The new 32Mb fast SRAM, advanced DDR4 and LPDDR4X SDRAMs, and our high-capacity Serial NOR Flash devices are designed to provide our customers with the performance they require for today’s competitive technology landscape.”
FEATURED PRODUCTS
32Mb Fast SRAM: Alliance Memory’s newly introduced 32Mb fast SRAM in a 48-ball FBGA package provides a wide power supply range and fast access times, making it ideal for a variety of high-speed applications.
DDR4 SDRAMs: The company has expanded its CMOS DDR4 SDRAM offerings with 8Gb, 16Gb, and 32Gb devices that combine fast clock speeds up to 1600MHz and transfer rates up to 3200MT/s. The DDR4 SDRAM are available in 78-ball and 96-ball FBGA packages.
LPDDR4X SDRAM: For mobile and high-performance applications, the new 16Gb LPDDR4X device features increased clock speeds and higher data rates in a 200-ball FBGA package.
High-Density Serial NOR Flash Devices: New additions to the Serial NOR Flash family include 128Mb, 256Mb, and 512Mb densities, offering flexible, high-performance memory solutions for a broad range of applications, from mobile PCs to connectivity modules.
To schedule an appointment with Alliance Memory at Embedded World 2025 or for more information about the company’s new products, please contact Bob Decker at bob.decker@redpinesgroup.com.
About Alliance Memory Alliance Memory is a worldwide provider of critical and hard-to-find memory ICs for the communications, computing, consumer electronics, medical, automotive, and industrial markets. The company’s product range includes flash, DRAM, and SRAM memory ICs with commercial, industrial, and automotive operating temperature ranges and densities from 64Kb to 128GB. Privately held, Alliance Memory maintains headquarters in Kirkland, Washington, and regional offices in Europe, Asia, Canada, and South America. More information about Alliance Memory is available online at www.alliancememory.com.
The supervisory board of Bigbank AS has decided on 28 February 2025 to extend the term of office of Martin Länts, Ken Kanarik and Ingo Põder as the members of the management board of Bigbank AS for another 3 years, beginning from the end of the previous term until 15 March 2028.
The management board of Bigbank AS will continue with five members: Martin Länts (Chairman of the management board), Ken Kanarik, Argo Kiltsmann Ingo Põder and Mart Veskimägi.
Bigbank AS (www.bigbank.eu), with over 30 years of operating history, is a commercial bank owned by Estonian capital. As of 31 January 2025, the bank’s total assets amounted to 2.9 billion euros, with equity of 273 million euros. Operating in nine countries, the bank serves more than 168,000 active customers and employs over 500 people. The credit rating agency Moody’s has assigned Bigbank a long-term bank deposit rating of Ba1, along with a baseline credit assessment (BCA) and an adjusted BCA of Ba2.
Argo Kiltsmann Member of the Management Board Telephone: +372 5393 0833 E-mail: argo.kiltsmann@bigbank.ee www.bigbank.ee
People in the UK need to adopt heat pumps and electric vehicles as fast as they once embraced refrigerators, mobile phones and internet connection according to a new report by the Climate Change Committee (CCC).
This government watchdog says the next 15 years will be critical for decarbonising the UK, one of the world’s largest (and earliest) carbon polluters. Eighty-seven percent of its climate-heating emissions must be eliminated by 2040 to keep the country on track for net zero emissions by mid-century, per the report. The majority (60%) of these cuts are expected to come via a single source: electricity.
Out of possible alternatives to a fossil fuelled economy, electrification has emerged as the favoured solution of experts at the CCC.
Ran Boydell, an associate professor in sustainable development at Heriot-Watt University, agrees. “Home boilers will very soon move into the realm of nostalgia,” he says.
The reason why heat pumps are increasingly touted as the future of home heating – and not retooled boilers that burn hydrogen instead of methane – is efficiency.
Boydell points out that green hydrogen fuel is made using electricity from solar and wind farms. We could eliminate emissions a lot quicker, he argues, if that electricity went directly to heat pumps instead.
Electricity can be turned into a fuel – or power appliances directly. Piyaset/Shutterstock
“This is because you end up with only two-thirds of the energy in the hydrogen that you started with from the electricity,” he says.
Likewise, battery-powered vehicles have an advantage that has allowed them to race ahead of hydrogen fuel cells to comprise almost a fifth of all new vehicles sold in the UK in 2024.
“An electric vehicle can be recharged wherever there is access to a plug socket,” say Tom Stacey and Chris Ivory, supply chain experts at Anglia Ruskin University. “The infrastructure that exists to support hydrogen vehicles is limited in comparison and will require extensive investment to introduce.”
If the route to zero emissions is largely settled, we need to travel it quickly.
Electric dreams
One of the fastest energy transitions in history occurred over a decade in South Korea, according to energy system researchers James Price and Steve Pye (UCL). Between 1977 and 1987, the generation of electricity from oil in the east Asian country collapsed – from roughly 7 million gigawatt-hours to nearly 7,000 – and was replaced with, among other sources, nuclear power.
There are historic analogues for the rapid shift necessary to arrest climate change. But a zero-carbon power sector, which the UK government aims to achieve by 2030, is just the start.
“Wind and solar, which provide more than 28% of the UK’s electricity, will soon overtake gas as the main generation source as more wind farms come online,” say energy system modeller Andrew Crossland and engineer Jon Gluyas, both of Durham University.
“But successive governments have failed to achieve the same result in homes and communities where so much high-carbon gas is burned, despite their decarbonisation being critical to net zero.”
Crossland and Gluyas note that solar panels, batteries and heat pumps can be installed “in days” to rapidly cut emissions, and that doing so would create “skilled jobs across the country”. As things stand, however, it would also present a severe challenge to the grid.
Mechanical engineer Florimond Gueniat of Birmingham City University predicts that converting UK transport to battery power wholesale would require expanding grid capacity by 46% – the equivalent of erecting 5,800 skyscraper-sized wind turbines. And that’s even accounting for the greater efficiency of electric vehicles, which waste less of the energy we put into them compared with oil-powered cars.
A massive upgrade to the electricity network is needed, and ordinary people have a part to play. Charging cars could serve as batteries that grid operators draw from during a supply pinch. The same goes for the power generated by solar panels on top of houses.
“Such policies in Germany have … already offset 10% of the national demand,” says Gueniat.
Getting to net zero requires the public’s involvement. But some of the CCC’s advice may be difficult to swallow. Not least the implication that people will have to eat 35% less meat and dairy in 2050 compared with 2019.
So are people ready for a world that runs on electrons alone? Aimee Ambrose, a professor of energy policy at Sheffield Hallam University, thinks heat pumps will struggle to compete with the inviting warmth of wood stoves and coal fires. Over three years she spoke with hundreds of people in the UK, Finland, Sweden and Romania and found strong attachments to high-carbon fuels even among people committed to solving climate change.
Human behaviour is the most difficult variable for experts who study climate change to model. There will certainly be drawbacks to abandoning fossil fuelled conveniences at breakneck speed. Yet, there are bound to be benefits too – some of which might only materialise once we get going.
In mid-April 2020, while much of humanity was under some form of lockdown to halt the spread of COVID-19, atmospheric chemist Paul Monks of the University of Leicester was marvelling at the sudden drop in air pollution, which kills millions of people each year and is predominantly caused by burning coal, oil and gas.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Press release
Dr Penelope Dash confirmed as new Chair of NHS England
Dr Penelope Dash has been appointed by the government as the next chair of NHS England
Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has today confirmed Dr Penny Dash will be the new Chair of NHS England.
Dr Dash is currently the Chair of the NHS North-West London Integrated Care Board and is leading a major review into the regulation of health and social care quality in England. Her interim report, published last year, shone a light on the scale of the failure at the Care Quality Commission, and sparked the appointment of new leadership to turn around the health and care regulator.
A former NHS doctor, senior partner at McKinsey and Company working on healthcare globally, and Head of Strategy at the Department of Health and Social Care, Dr Dash has a wealth of experience in the public, private and government sectors.
As Chair of NHS England, she will be drawing on her vast knowledge in these fields to focus on rebuilding the NHS as part of the government’s 10 Year Health Plan.
She was selected following an open public appointment process to appoint a successor to Richard Meddings, who is due to step down next month.
Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said:
I am delighted to confirm Dr Penny Dash as the new Chair of NHS England. She is a radical reformer, with the skills and experience we need to help fix our broken NHS and make it fit for the future.
I look forward to working with her as we continue to tackle the waiting list backlog, unleash innovation in health services, and support our healthcare staff to deliver the timely care patients deserve.
I would also like to thank Richard Meddings for his dedicated service, helping to guide the NHS through the aftermath of the pandemic.
Dr Penny Dash said:
I am honoured to have been appointed the new Chair of NHS England.
I am excited to start working with my NHS colleagues and the government to accelerate the process of renewal and rebuilding to make sure the NHS continues to serve the needs of its communities and its staff.
The 10 Year Health Plan is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the NHS to take on the challenges of the future and I look forward to playing my part.
Dr Dash was confirmed as the government’s preferred candidate in February. The Secretary of State took the final decision following a hearing with the Health and Social Care Committee on 26 February 2025.
This appointment is a four-year term and begins 1 April 2025.
Secondary school admission figures for entry in September 2025 published today [3 March] reveal that 93.7% per cent of York children have been allocated their first preference of school
Parents and carers who applied online can find out where their child has been allocated a place by logging into their parent portal account today via www.york.gov.uk/SecondarySchoolAdmissions.
Parents who made written applications will receive a letter confirming their admission arrangements. Anyone who didn’t receive their first choice of school will also receive written confirmation.
This year’s admissions figures, compared with last year’s are outlined below:
2024
2025
Quantity
%
Quantity
%
1st Preference
1809
93.6%
1794
93.7%
2nd Preference
80
4.1%
78
4.1%
3rd Preference
18
0.9%
12
0.6%
4th Preference
2
0.1%
3
0.2%
5th Preference
0
0.0%
1
0.1%
Non Preference
23
1.2%
26
1.4%
Total
1932
100%
1914
100.0%
Councillor Bob Webb, Executive Member for Education, Children and Young People, at City of York Council, said:
Moving on to secondary school is an exciting time and I’m pleased that the vast majority of students in York have got into their first choice of school. I wish all the students moving on in September the best of luck. I know that York schools are committed to supporting your transition into big school.”
Parents or carers whose children may be eligible for free school meals – one of a number of benefits that come with applying for the pupil premium – should apply through their online account at www.york.gov.uk/parentportal
The Lord Mayor of Leeds Charity Appeal ‘Just One Day’ has been hailed a ‘great success’, after returning last Thursday (27 February) with the theme of ‘one day to play’.
The event runs all year, but features a day where schools, universities, businesses and the public can spend the day, or any time they can spare, participating in fun activities to raise money for the Lord Mayor’s charity.
This year, the Lord Mayor, Councillor Abigail Marshall Katung,chose the Leeds Community Foundation as her charity.
Leeds Community Foundation is an independent grant maker, collaborator, and leader that brings together organisations and individuals to invest in communities, building a fairer Leeds for everyone. The foundation’s funding helps community organisations to continue and expand their work, so they can reach more people and have a greater impact in our communities.
Together with her deep support for the Leeds Community Foundation, the Lord Mayor is passionate about improving mental health for children and young people in Leeds and believes that play is one way to do this.
The Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Abigail Marshall Katung, said: “Just One Day is a fantastic event raising much-needed funds for a local charity that does incredible work with community organisations throughout the city.
“We are thrilled to be working with Child Friendly Leeds this year to deliver the theme of ‘just one day to play’. Play is something that we have decided to prioritise because of its importance to the development of children and young people. Having the support of Child Friendly Leeds in Just One Day and to have specially developed lesson plans and resources has enhanced the event and brought the whole Leeds community together.
“It’s been fabulous to watch the children playing and learning and the event has been a real success for all those who participated.
“Anyone can participate in Just One Day at any time of year. I encourage everyone, adults, and children alike, to take some playtime, get involved and raise money for a fantastic charity.”
As a part of the day, the Lord Mayor visited two schools, Lane End Primary and Blenheim Primary, that recognise the importance of play, making their normal lessons more playful by adding extra playtime and dressing up just for fun!
The children at Lane End Primary donated to come to school wearing comfy clothes and be ready to add play into their curriculum. They had the opportunity to give feedback on their playful learning and how their school could be improved for play, which the headteacher plans to take to school governors.
Lane End Primary headteacher, Jane Hopwood, said: “Lane End Primary School believes in the power of learning through play.
“Our children loved meeting the Lord Mayor and have been inspired to be playful throughout the day. We’ve been problem solving, creating, and building outside in the sunshine at dinner time. Staff and children also explored how to improve play in school and across the city and hope to invite the Lord Mayor back so she can hear our ideas.”
Blenheim Primary also took part in the day. They turned their normal lessons into playful ones, creating nonsense poetry and poems about play which they read out to the Lord Mayor in a play-themed assembly.
At lunchtime at the Civic Hall, the Lord Mayor attended a free food event provided by the charity, Rapid Relief Team, with the Leeds Community Foundation, where those taking food were asked to donate to Just One Day in place of payment.
To find out more about how to take part in ‘Just One Day’ or to donate, please visit www.leeds.gov.uk/justoneday.
To find out more about how Child Friendly Leeds is prioritising play in the city please visit Play | Child Friendly Leeds. To learn how to take part in ‘Just One Day’ or to donate, please visit www.leeds.gov.uk/justoneday.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Ross Lazear, Instructor in Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York
“How are clouds’ shapes made?” – Amanda, age 5, Chile
I’m a meteorologist, and I’ve been fascinated by weather since I was 8 years old. I grew up in Minnesota, where the weather changes from wind-whipping blizzards in winter to severe thunderstorms – sometimes with tornadoes – in the summer. So, it’s not all that surprising that I’ve spent most of my life looking at clouds.
All clouds form as a result of saturation – that’s when the air contains so much water vapor that it begins producing liquid or ice.
Once you understand how certain clouds develop their shapes, you can learn to forecast the weather.
Clouds that look like cartoon cotton balls or cauliflower are made up of tiny liquid water droplets and are called cumulus clouds.
Often, these are fair-weather clouds that form when the Sun warms the ground and the warm air rises. You’ll often see them on humid summer days.
Cumulus clouds over Lander, Wyo. Ross Lazear, CC BY-ND
However, if the air is particularly warm and humid, and the atmosphere above is much colder, cumulus clouds can rapidly grow vertically into cumulonimbus. When the edges of these clouds look especially crisp, it’s a sign that heavy rain or snow may be imminent.
Wispy cirrus are ice clouds
When cumulonimbus clouds grow high enough into the atmosphere, the temperature becomes cold enough for ice clouds, or cirrus, to form.
Clouds made up entirely of ice are usually more transparent. In some cases, you can see the Sun or Moon through them.
Cirrus clouds over the roof of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Ross Lazear, CC BY-ND
Cirrus clouds that forms atop a thunderstorm spread outward and can form anvil clouds. These clouds flatten on top as they reach the stratosphere, where the atmosphere begins to warm with height.
However, most cirrus clouds aren’t associated with storms at all. There are many ice clouds associated with tranquil weather that are simply regions of the atmosphere with more moisture but not precipitation.
Fog and stratus clouds
Clouds are a result of saturation, but saturated air can also exist at ground level. When this occurs, we call it fog.
In temperatures below freezing, fog can actually deposit ice onto objects at or near the ground, called rime ice.
Reading clouds, with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
When clouds form thick layers, we add the word “stratus,” or “layer,” to the name. Stratus can occur just above the ground, or a bit higher up – we call it altostratus then. It can occur even higher and become cirrostratus, or a layer or ice clouds.
If there’s enough moisture and lift, stratus clouds can create rain or snow. These are nimbostratus.
How mountains can create their own clouds
There are a number of other unique and beautiful cloud types that can form as air rises over mountain slopes and other topography.
Lenticular clouds, for example, can look like flying saucers hovering just above, or near, mountaintops. Lenticular clouds can actually form far from mountains, as wind over a mountain range creates an effect like ripples in a pond.
A banner cloud appears to stream out from the Matterhorn, in the Alps on the border between Italy and Switzerland. Zacharie Grossen via Wikimedia, CC BY
Rarer are banner clouds, which form from horizontally spinning air on one side of a mountain.
Wind plays a big role
You might have looked up at the sky and noticed one layer of clouds moving in a different direction from another. Clouds move along with the wind, so what you’re seeing is the wind changing direction with height.
Cirrus clouds at the level of the jet stream – often about 6 miles (10 kilometers), above the ground – can sometimes move at over 200 miles per hour (320 kilometers per hour). But because they are so high up, it’s often hard to tell how fast they are moving.
Ross Lazear does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Trump is not the first American leader to dream of northern expansion. To me, a historian of early U.S.-Canadian relations, these designs suggest not power, but weakness and simmering divisions inside the United States.
Early Americans’ lust for Canada
Even before independence, social conflict helped turn American eyes northward. Throughout the 18th century, England’s Colonial population in North America doubled every 25 years. Successive generations of Colonists along the Eastern Seaboard had to compete with each other, and with Indigenous people, for resources, arable land and trade.
These unhappy, land-hungry Colonists clamored for expansion, instigating a series of wars against both the French and Spanish empires for control of the northeastern half of the continent, culminating in the French and Indian War, from 1754 to 1763.
While these Colonists were animated by their thirst for expansion, they had little else unifying them. Many Americans today are familiar with the “Join, or Die” cartoon Ben Franklin printed, featuring a segmented snake with each section representing one of the Colonies. However, few realize that it was not crafted during the Revolution to unite Colonists against Britain, but in 1754, to rally divided British Colonists in their war against France.
Attempts to settle other lands ceded by France were no more successful. Fearful that Colonists might provoke a costly war with Indigenous people, Parliament issued the Proclamation of 1763, which attempted to protect native land by discouraging Colonial expansion westward. Many Colonists turned against Britain in response, especially those like George Washington, who had speculated in the land west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The failed invasion of Canada
In the earliest months of the Revolution, the Continental Congress authorized an American invasion of British-occupied Quebec. In a letter addressed to “Friends and Brethren” of Canada, Washington himself implored Canadians to join invading troops. “The Cause of America, and of Liberty, is the Cause of every virtuous American Citizen,” he wrote. “Come then, ye generous Citizens, range yourselves under the Standard of general Liberty.”
But at home, Colonists were far from united in their rebellion. Historians estimate that around 20% of the white Colonial population, more than 500,000 people, remained loyal to Britain, and an even larger number hoped to remain neutral.
The difficult realities of conquest also turned many soldiers against the invasion of Canada. In late October 1775, nearly a quarter of the underfed and overworked troops under the command of soon-to-be turncoat Benedict Arnold abandoned their arduous journey through interior Maine toward Canada. The soldiers who carried on prayed these deserters “might die by the way, or meet with some disaster, Equal to the Cowardly dastardly and unfriendly Spirit they discover’d in returning Back without orders.”
Following American independence, tens of thousands of loyal Colonists sailed north to Canada, determined to build British colonies that would become what one of these refugees called “the envy of the American States.” Their presence on the contested northern border was an unsettling reminder to the new American nation about the power Britain still exerted on the continent.
Conflict with Britain over land and trade in the early 1800s reopened old divisions among Americans. Virginia Congressman John Randolph expressed his frustrations with renewed calls for a northern invasion. “We have but one word, like the whip-poor-will, but one eternal monstrous tone,” an exasperated Randolph noted, “Canada! Canada! Canada!”
The debate over Canada was one of many issues dividing the nation, and as President James Madison would later explain, he hoped that war would help unify a polarized nation. His gamble paid off, but only after opponents from New England flirted with the idea of secession to negotiate their own end to conflict.
One example of annexation talk from the 20th century, however, might serve as a warning to Trump, showing how aggressive rhetoric toward Canada has led to political defeat. In 1911, a bill creating free trade with Canada passed Congress with the support of President William Taft, despite objections from protectionists in both parties.
In an attempt to have the agreement defeated in the Canadian Parliament, U.S. opponents from both sides of the aisle attempted to stir popular sentiment against the U.S. in Canada. Champ Clark, the Democratic speaker of the House and a front-runner for the presidential nomination in 1912, seized on the moment.
“I hope to see the day when the American flag will float over every square foot of the British North American possessions, clear to the North Pole,” Champ proclaimed on the House floor. William Stiles Bennet, a Republican, proposed a resolution that would authorize the president to begin negotiations for annexation.
Back home, however, the plan backfired. Woodrow Wilson, not Clark, secured the Democratic nomination in 1912 and would go on to defeat both the incumbent Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt. The bluster led not to success and victory, but loss and defeat.
G. Patrick O’Brien does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
