NewzIntel.com

Category: European Union

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Family wellness day showcasing support on offer across Plymouth

    Source: City of Plymouth

    Families in Plymouth are invited to a free wellness event, which includes fun activities for children and the opportunity for parents and carers to learn more about the local support that’s available to them.  

    Taking place at Plymouth Life Centre on Saturday 8 February from 10.30am to 2.30pm, the event is organised by Plymouth City Council and NHS Devon with support from Plymouth Active Leisure and Plymouth Parent Carer Voice.  

    More than 50 organisations will be on hand to give advice and showcase their services, offering support on a huge range of issues including mental health, physical wellbeing, healthy eating, parenting, finances and the cost of living.  

    There’s a packed line-up of activities taking place throughout the day too, with attendees able to join in with dance, yoga and dodgeball sessions. There will also be demonstrations of wrestling and boxing.  

    The creche will be open for parents and carers to stay and play with toddlers, and there will also be a bouncy castle and inflatables for children to enjoy.  

    Councillor Jemima Laing, Deputy Leader of Plymouth City Council, said: “This is a really unique and exciting opportunity for families in Plymouth to discover the huge range of support that’s available across the city. Whether you’re worried about something in particular or would just like to learn more about local organisations that can help you, come along and get involved.”  

    Su Smart, Director of women and children’s improvement at NHS Devon, said: “We are keen to connect families to local support and services in Plymouth and this is a great opportunity to find out what is available. Improving the wellbeing of children and young people in our local community is extremely important to us and this is a good opportunity to connect with local people, networks and organisations.” 

    The event is open to all families in Plymouth. You can drop in on the day or register your interest in advance here: http://www.plymouthpcv.co.uk/health-wellness-event.  

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Drake’s Leat uncovered as part of Armada Way regeneration project

    Source: City of Plymouth

    Wat-er interesting find. Who would have thought drains could be so fascinating, but they are when the contractor was none other than Sir Francis Drake!

    Contractors working on Armada Way are lifting the lid on a slice of Plymouth history – Drake’s Leat, which supplied the city’s water for several hundred years.

    Drake’s Leat opened in 1591 and ran for 17 miles from the River Meavy to the sea. As part of the contract, Drake was granted leases for six water mills along its course.

    Sections of the leat are still very visible on the moors and along the Tavistock Road at Derriford. This city centre section is buried several metres below the surface but is being in part uncovered as part of the preparation work for the regeneration scheme.

    As it is a known archaeological feature, AC Archaeology have been commissioned by the council to record its condition and preserve findings by record before it is covered over once more – in line with best practice to keep finds in situ wherever possible.

    The work will involve photographs and creating scaled drawings when the leat is exposed as well as sampling organic material, if there is suitable access.

    The leat was created at street level but now it’s a couple of metres down, which shows how much the lay of the land has changed. Blitz rubble was used as infill when the city centre was completely rebuilt after the war.

    The industrial revolution in the early 19th Century saw factories and foundries crop up in this location, all of which used water from the leat. Early Victorian maps show an iron works, a sawmill and a dye works in the area currently occupied by SpecSavers, Barclay’s Bank and B&M. A fabric production factory close to the site also produced sails for the Royal Navy.

    Councillor Mark Lowry, city centre champion said: “This stretch of the leat will be particularly interesting due to its reconstruction in the Victorian era to help serve the industries nearby. It will be fascinating to see what archaeologists find. It all adds to the story of Plymouth.”

    Part of the massive Armada Way Regeneration scheme will reference the leat. The water play area will follow its direction and there will be metal markers in the ground to indicate to people the location and direction and flow of the water through the leat.

    The leat fell out of fashion and out of use in the early 1800s when reservoirs were built to supply water to Plymouth’s rapidly expanding population. Two reservoirs were built at Drake’s Place currently part of the University of Plymouth campus on North Hill. The leat within the city centre area was covered over to prevent pollution and to reduce the danger to pedestrians, especially children.

    In 1826 the Corporation laid new iron pipes to supply water. Other reservoirs were built in the mid to late 1800s at Crownhill, Hartley, Roborough and Yelverton.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Press Release – Animal products and by-products imported from Germany prohibited to protect livestock from foot and mouth disease Friday 24 January 2025

    Source: Channel Islands – States of Alderney

    Press Release

    Date: 24th January 2025

    Animal products and by-products imported from Germany prohibited to protect livestock from foot and mouth disease

    Following an outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) in Germany, to protect local livestock from risk of infection, people returning to the Bailiwick are not permitted to bring certain animal products and by-products into the Bailiwick from European countries.

    FMD poses no risk to human health.

    All imports of the following animal products from pigs and ruminants (e.g. sheep, cattle and goats) from Germany are prohibited:

    ·         Fresh meat and meat products including sausages, ham, and cured meats.

    ·         Milk and dairy products including butter and cheese.

    Anyone returning to the Bailiwick from the EU (excluding Germany), Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, can only import animal products from pigs and ruminants for personal consumption provided that they:

    ·         are packaged to EU commercial standards and weigh no more than 2kg per person, and

    ·         bear an identification or health mark (or commercial labelling if it is an animal by-product) to evidence that they are commercially produced.

    These restrictions do not apply to infant milk, medical foods and certain low risk composite products (including some chocolate, confectionery, bread, cakes, biscuits, pasta and food supplements).

    If any prohibited products are imported they will be placed in the secure bins provided at the harbour and airport.

    David Chamberlain, States Veterinary Officer, said:

    “FMD poses no risk to human or food safety, but is a highly contagious viral disease of cattle, sheep, pigs and other cloven-hoofed animals.

    “We urge islanders not to bring prohibited animal products to the Bailiwick from the EU to avoid introducing this virus to our local herds, which could have a devastating impact on animal health and welfare.”

    Ends

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Security: His Majesty the King of the Netherlands visits Europol

    Source: Europol

    His Majesty the King of the Netherlands visited Europol today, where he gained insight into the Agency’s efforts to support EU Member States in tackling serious and organised crime, and terrorism.Europol’s Executive Director Catherine De Bolle welcomed His Majesty to the organisation’s headquarters as Europol recently marked 25 years of fostering law enforcement cooperation across Europe and beyond. Becoming fully…

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI: Fidelity D & D Bancorp, Inc. First Quarter 2025 Dividend

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    DUNMORE, Pa., Jan. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Board of Directors of Fidelity D & D Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDBC), parent company of The Fidelity Deposit and Discount Bank, announce their declaration of the Company’s 2025 first quarter dividend of $0.40 per share, a 5% increase above the prior year’s first quarter dividend paid of $0.38 per share. The dividend is payable March 10, 2025 to shareholders of record at the close of business on February 14, 2025.

    Fidelity D & D Bancorp, Inc. serves Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northampton and Lehigh Counties through The Fidelity Deposit and Discount Bank’s 21 full-service community banking offices, along with the Fidelity Bank Wealth Management Minersville Office in Schuylkill County. Fidelity Bank provides a digital and virtual experience via digital services and digital account opening through Online Banking and the Fidelity Mobile Banking app.

    For more information visit our investor relations web site through http://www.bankatfidelity.com.

    This press release may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results and trends could differ materially from those set forth in such statements due to various factors. These factors include the possibility that increased demand or prices for the company’s financial services and products may not occur, changing economic, interest rate and competitive conditions, technological developments and other risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
     
    Contacts:              
    Daniel J. Santaniello
    President and Chief Executive Officer
    570-504-8035    		   Salvatore R. DeFrancesco, Jr.
    Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer
    570-504-8000
         

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Romania Native Charged With Illegal Reentry

    Source: Office of United States Attorneys

    WILLIAMSPORT – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced that Nicolae Strava, age 30, a citizen of Romania, was indicted on January 23, 2025, by a federal grand jury for illegal reentry.

    According to Acting United States Attorney John C. Gurganus, the indictment alleges that Strava was previously removed from the United States on April 23, 2019, through Houston, Texas.  It is alleged that he was subsequently found in the United States on September 20, 2024, in Centre County, Pennsylvania, without having first obtained legal permission to reenter the country.

    This case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).  Assistant U.S. Attorney Robin Zenzinger is prosecuting the case.

    The maximum penalty under federal law for the most significant offense is two years, a fine, and supervised release following imprisonment.  A sentence following a finding of guilt is imposed by the Judge after consideration of the applicable federal sentencing statutes and the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.

    Indictments are only allegations. All persons charged by indictment are presumed to be innocent unless and until found guilty in court.

    # # #

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Sexism linked to social ills for men and women, finds largest cross-cultural study of its kind

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Magdalena Zawisza, Associate Professor in Gender and Consumer Psychology, Director of Groups and Societies Research Centre and Chair of Faculty Athena Swan Committee, Anglia Ruskin University

    Feminism is facing a backlash, with women’s rights being rolled back in many countries and a significant number of people saying feminism has gone far enough or even too far. Yet women still face basic obstacles to education in some countries and are generally paid less than men. They still suffer from male violence and, in some places, face increasing restrictions to reproductive rights. There are even some places where families force midwives to kill their newborn girls.

    Many women are also fed up with doing both a full-time job and the lion’s share of domestic duties and unpaid caring jobs. It’s easy to wonder whether gender equality is simply impossible, especially as many men inaccurately perceive that gains for women equate losses for men.

    But there is hope. Our 62-nation psychological study, which is largest of its kind, suggests that gender equality benefits us all and sexism is harmful to everybody – women, men and nations in many surprising ways. As such, we all have an interest in promoting egalitarianism.

    As our findings show, sexism is linked with several social ills affecting us all. For example, higher sexism predicted lower GDP – indicating lower economic productivity. It also predicted a lower “global peace index”, meaning nation’s higher domestic and international conflict, militarisation and lower safety and security.

    Further, sexism was linked to a greater level of antidemocratic practices in a given country. Lastly, it even predicted shorter healthy lifespans (ones without chronic disease or disability) in women and men as measured with WHO’s Healthy Life Expectancy in Women and Men. For example, our data reveals that one point increase in sexism (measured from 0-5) is linked with a 9.12 months shorter lifespan in men and 8.88 months in women.

    While the type of analysis we did cannot directly prove that sexism causes these issues, the pattern of our findings aligns with theoretically driven predictions and with experiments that directly test such links on a smaller scale. It makes more sense to expect that sexism leads to poor health than that poor health leads to sexism, for example.

    Specifically, other research reports that sexism reduces human capital by restricting women’s education and job opportunities, thus depleting economic productivity. A country where most women work is likely to have much higher productivity than a country where all the women stay at home.

    Research also shows that sexist masculine norms encourage male violence contributing to greater conflict. And we know that sexism is linked to medical discrimination for women, such as less medical research on women and treating women’s complaints as less credible. This may lead to poorer health.

    Sexism prevents men from getting help with their mental and physical health.
    YURII MASLAK/Shutterstock

    For men, sexism discourages seeking help for psychological or medical problems, seeing it as weakness. It also encourages risk-taking, such as aggression or not using seatbelts. This may well cause a reduction in health and wellbeing.

    Two faces of sexism

    Importantly, our study also reveals that affectionate but patronising attitudes to women are also harmful to all – you might not even recognise them as sexist. And you are not alone.

    After 30 years of its conception, our research supports the ambivalent sexism theory. The theory proposes that sexism has two faces: hostile and benevolent. While both are ugly, the latter hides under the veil of superficial positivity. Hostile sexism is an open and overt hostility to non-traditional women and a desire to punish those who break norms, such as female politicians.

    Benevolent sexism, on the other hand, is superficially positive but patronising. It includes attitudes that reward traditional women, such as stay-at-home mums, by idealising them, offering them male protection and provision. This sounds innocent, but such beliefs imply women’s weakness.

    In fact, research has shown that exposure to benevolent sexism increases women’s acceptance of hostile sexism, decreases their work performance, and reduces their support for gender equality action.

    Both ideologies work together to maintain men’s power over women: they form a system of rewards and punishments akin to the iron fist (hostility) in a velvet glove (benevolence). Thus, hostile and benevolent sexism are internalised also by women.

    Our study shows that people who hold benevolent sexist views are also more likely to hold hostile sexist views, as the two correlate positively in 62 countries across five continents. Compared with 2000, when the last such study was done in 19 countries, average national sexism scores dropped a meagre 0.47 points (on a 0-5 scale). See our world map of this and other concepts we measured.

    While men are more sexist than women around the world, women’s beliefs about themselves are also sexist to some extent. Interestingly, as men’s hostile sexism increased, women embraced benevolent sexism more (sometimes outscoring men) – probably attempting to secure the promised protection and provision.

    Unfortunately, this benevolent promise appears false. Across our 62 countries, the higher benevolent sexism, the lower was the gender equality, women’s labour participation and the more time women spend on unpaid domestic chores.

    Taken together, our research suggests that it may well be in the interests of women, men and nations alike to tackle sexism for a better future for us all. In other words, women’s gains mean men’s gains too.

    Dr Magdalena Zawisza received funding for activities related to this study from from National Science Centre, Poland. She volunteers her expertise to Women on Boards CIC Leadership Committee and Think Tank, UK.

    This research was funded by a grant from the National Science Centre in Poland (grant 18 number: 2017/26/M/HS6/00360) awarded to Natasza Kosakowska-Berezecka

    – ref. Sexism linked to social ills for men and women, finds largest cross-cultural study of its kind – https://theconversation.com/sexism-linked-to-social-ills-for-men-and-women-finds-largest-cross-cultural-study-of-its-kind-247183

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Holocaust: how ‘rescue archaeology’ is tackling the impending loss of surviving witnesses

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tony Kushner, James Parkes Professor of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations, University of Southampton

    This year is the 80th anniversary of the Soviet army’s liberation of Auschwitz, the huge and complex concentration and death camp in which one million Jews were murdered.

    The theme of this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is For a Better Future, a message of hope that is much needed in this extremely troubling world, where the far right is gaining power inside and outside of Europe.

    An issue which has troubled those, like myself, who are involved with Holocaust education and memorialisation for some time is what to do when the survivor generation passes on.

    This is no longer a theoretical concern. Every year, inevitably and at an accelerating rate, the numbers of Holocaust survivors diminishes. In the past few years in the UK alone, prominent survivors have been lost. Most recently Lily Ebert, aged 100, who late in life became famous through relating her harrowing story through the very modern media of TikTok.

    Speaking about her death, King Charles said: “Alongside other Holocaust survivors she became an integral part of the fabric of our nation; her extraordinary resilience and courage an example to us all, which will never be forgotten.”

    Indeed, many Holocaust survivors have been prominent in recent years, recounting their testimony to schools and the media. Holocaust Memorial Day, inaugurated at the start of the new millennium, has provided a special place for survivors at both a national and local level.

    This year at the University of Southampton, for example, we are privileged to have Janine Webber, a survivor of the Lvov ghetto in German-occupied Poland, speaking. She will relay to a diverse audience of all ages and backgrounds her life before, during and after the Holocaust.

    Through the Parkes Institute for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations, we have organised this city-wide event for over two decades. We know, however, that this may be one of the last times we will be privileged to have the survivors at the heart of our programme. In 2035 it will be the 90th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and by then few survivors, if any, will still be alive.



    Read more:
    Charlotte Delbo and the women of Convoy 31000: how researching their stories led me to a forgotten subcamp and Nazi lies in the Auschwitz archive

    There is a certain irony in the understandable angst about the devastating prospect of a world without Holocaust survivors (as well as their liberators, and those who helped Jewish people during their darkest hour).

    For many years after 1945, Holocaust survivors were not given the space to talk about their experiences – a silence that often extended to their children and wider families. It was only talking in their own small circles that these survivors felt that their experiences would be understood.

    Now the situation is very different. Survivors are honoured for their work in educating new generations born well after the second world war. King Charles’s heartfelt tribute to Ebert reflects a wider tendency. Many have been given honours, including a knighthood to the late survivor leader, Ben Helfgott, who died in 2023. Helfgott was one of over 700 child survivors who were flown to the UK in 1945 to recuperate and ended up making a huge contribution to the country.

    The Pride of Britain Awards honoured Sir Ben Helfgott in 2020.

    In the 1950s and 60s, when the first histories of the Holocaust were produced, the focus was on the perpetrators and the victims were voiceless and seen as “uneducated men” who had no place in accounts of the recent past. All of this changed in the late 20th century when the Holocaust grew in public awareness and interest.

    Belatedly, the survivors were rescued from obscurity and the human element of the tragedy came to the fore. Local and then international testimony projects emerged, the largest being the ongoing Visual History Archive which has interviewed close to 60,000 survivors, including of more recent genocides such as that in Rwanda.

    ‘Rescue archaeology’

    I have estimated that there may be up to 100,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors in video, oral history and written format – perhaps the most related to any event in history. Most recently these interviews have been developed as interactive holograms where students and others can ask questions of the survivors such as the University of Southern California’s Dimensions project.

    These projects are a form of “rescue archaeology”, saving the testimony of survivors before it is too late. They are, especially in the hologram form, a way of directly confronting the dilemma of how to educate and commemorate without the survivors actually being present.

    The University of Southern California’s Dimensions in Testimony project.

    In 2000, the Imperial War Museum in London opened its first Holocaust galleries. Before then the Holocaust had rarely been confronted by this landmark museum. In 2019 a new permanent Holocaust exhibition was also opened. In both exhibitions, survivor testimony was a prominent and engaging feature. Video testimony especially can capture the attention of all age groups and backgrounds.

    But even with this remarkable resource of recorded Holocaust testimony, something huge and irreplaceable will be lost when we no longer have the survivors to tell their stories.

    Even when survivors are unfocused in their presentation, or they find it challenging to communicate what is ultimately indescribable, there has been a bond between them and their audience. In some ways their presence has made it too easy for those involved in education and commemoration to deal with the Holocaust.

    We must therefore find fresh ways of doing justice to their experiences, using their recorded experiences (including those who were killed but managed to write their testimony in the war itself through diaries) and finding creative ways of engaging a new generation to whom this is now distant history.

    It would be naive, however, to think that the post-survivor world will be an easy one to navigate. We have been lucky that the survivors have had the courage and energy to share their experiences and must regret that it took us so long to listen.

    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.

    Tony Kushner 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.

    – ref. The Holocaust: how ‘rescue archaeology’ is tackling the impending loss of surviving witnesses – https://theconversation.com/the-holocaust-how-rescue-archaeology-is-tackling-the-impending-loss-of-surviving-witnesses-248202

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The pope’s memoir, Oscar nominees and a mafia exhibition – what to read, see and do this week

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Anna Walker, Senior Arts + Culture Editor

    I finally got round to watching Conclave last week. Two hours of Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini in Oscar-nominated performances alongside Lucian Msamati and a stray papal turtle. The scandals. The tension. The outfits (also nominated). A sublime experience.

    On the way home from the cinema, I became lost in background reading. “How much do we know about real conclaves controversies?” I jabbed into Google. “How close was the film’s pope to the current pontiff, Francis?” As I soon realised, the real Vatican is frequently stranger than fiction. Take Wake Up!, for example, Pope Francis’s progressive rock album (no, really) which was released in 2015.

    More surprises are in store in his autobiography, Hope, which was published this week. It’s the first time a pope has written a memoir. As explained by our reviewer, the appropriately named historian of the Catholic church Professor Liam Temple, we’ve never known this much about the pontiff before. We learn that young Francis was an avid football and basketball fan, for example. But also, that he’s now a deeply remorseful man, often impatient and periodically anti-social.



    Read more:
    Pope Francis autobiography: we’ve never known so much about the pontiff before

    The book had us wondering. Would you rather learn about historic figures through their own words, or the art of others? Answer our poll to let us know and reply to this email with your favourite memoir of all time. My colleague Naomi’s is Just Kids by Patti Smith.

    A brutal backlash

    The Brutalist swept the Oscars shortlist yesterday with ten nominations including best picture, director and actor in a leading role. We asked a real architect to review the film.



    Read more:
    The Brutalist: an architect’s take on a film about one man’s journey to realise his visionary building

    The trailer for The Brutalist.

    Adrian Brody plays Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth. He’s arrived in Philadelphia after surviving the Holocaust and is taken under the patronage of wealthy industrialist, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pearce). It’s a monumental work about the foundations, both literal and ideological, of post-war America. Three-and-a-half hours long (with a welcome intermission) it is staggering in its scale and ambition – a film that really must be seen in the cinema.

    For fans, the Academy’s support is a relief. For the past week, nominations were in doubt due to a growing backlash around the film’s use of AI to enhance the authenticity of the actors’ Hungarian accents. The language’s hard-to-imitate vowel sounds proved tricky even for Brody, whose mother was a Hungarian refugee. For Dr Dominic Lees, who has been researching the use of AI in filmmaking for six years, this creative decision is hardly shocking, especially in comparison to other recent uses of the technology – we’re looking at you, Here.



    Read more:
    AI voice technology used in The Brutalist is nothing new – the backlash is about transparency

    The trailer for Kyoto.

    With a climate-change denier back in the White House, the London opening of Kyoto at the West End’s Soho Place could hardly be timelier. The Royal Shakespeare Company production dramatises the intense negotiations of the world’s first climate change treaty. In doing so, it “turns diplomacy into a contact sport”, eliciting gales of laughter from the audience and raising plentiful questions to ponder on the way home.

    Kyoto is playing at London’s Soho Place theatre until May 3.

    Through the lens

    We caused some controversy last week with our rundown of six covers of Bob Dylan songs that were better than the originals. “What no Guns N’ Roses, Knocking on Heaven’s Door?” asked one reader. “I’ll give you Hendrix, but all the others are ersatz compared to Bob’s versions,” proclaimed another.

    The trailer for A Complete Unknown.

    Hopefully one thing Dylan fans can agree on is the strength of Timothee Chalamet’s Oscar-nominated performance in the new biopic, A Complete Unknown. To our reviewer’s mind, he brings charm, vulnerability and authenticity to what will surely become one of the stand-out roles of his career.



    Read more:
    A Complete Unknown: Chalamet’s brilliant performance captures the elusive essence of a young Dylan

    You might expect an exhibition of mafia photos to depict conflict, violence, men in suits and victims in pieces. But a new show of Sicilian photographer Letizia Battaglia at London’s Photographers’ Gallery instead presents images of lovers, flowers and children in the street.

    Born in 1935, Battaglia was one of the first women reporters in Italy. This is the first major UK exhibition of her work since her death in 2022. Through her lens, she frequently captured the ambiguous reality of the mafia in Sicily. The revolution of her work was the way it stripped the mafia of its glamour, by showing not only its violence, the murders, the desperation, but also the banality and the normalisation of their crimes.

    Letizia Battaglia: Life, Love and Death in Sicily is on at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, until February 23.

    – ref. The pope’s memoir, Oscar nominees and a mafia exhibition – what to read, see and do this week – https://theconversation.com/the-popes-memoir-oscar-nominees-and-a-mafia-exhibition-what-to-read-see-and-do-this-week-248184

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The Holocaust poets who can help us to understand genocides past and present

    Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jean Boase-Beier, Emeritus Professor, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia

    On Holocaust Memorial Day we remember the victims of the Nazi Holocaust in 1940s Europe and all those affected by later genocides.

    I believe that reading poetry is an important way to commemorate these victims because it is such a personal form.

    The events of the Holocaust are familiar to many people as dates and numbers. The first concentration camp opened in Dachau in 1933. In 1942 the infamous meeting at the Wannsee took place in Berlin to decide upon the “final solution” to the perceived problem of Jewish people in Germany and beyond.

    Some 6 million Jewish people were murdered, some 200,000 disabled and ill people were killed in Germany alone and 400,000 people were forcibly sterilised because they possessed traits the Nazis deemed undesirable.

    Such statistics are well documented by Holocaust historians. But behind these numbers, overwhelming in their sheer vastness, are individuals, those whose voices we hear especially clearly in poems.

    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.

    People wrote poetry as realisation grew of their likely fate even before the murderous events that later came to be called the Holocaust. Many wrote poetry about the Holocaust later, because they survived and wanted the world to hear their stories, or because they lost family members and wanted to remember them.

    Among those who wrote after the Holocaust was German poet Volker von Törne, who was wracked with vicarious guilt for his father’s Nazi past.

    But it is the poems written as the events of the Holocaust were unfolding that strike a particular chord. These are poems by prisoners facing execution, by Jewish members of society forced to live in overcrowded ghettos, by those in camps and those about to be transported to camps. Often such poems were written on odd scraps of paper, carefully hidden or buried in the ground, or smuggled out of prison, ghetto or camp.

    These writers, desperate to tell their stories, chose poetry because of its immediacy, its conciseness, its emotional impact and its ability to say what cannot easily be said in prose.

    Almost none of them wrote in English, so English speakers read them via translators who can speak their words for them, fashioning new versions that aim to capture the style of the originals with all its resonances and as much of their immediacy and impact as possible.

    Poets of the Holocaust

    Some Holocaust poets became famous, and their work has been translated many times. One of the best known, Paul Celan, was a Romanian-German poet. His parents died in the Holocaust. He died by suicide in 1970, having written some of the most memorable poems about the Holocaust, including Death-Fugue (1948), which described the repetitive and deadly rhythm of camp life and death.

    German poet Nelly Sachs, who escaped at the last minute to Sweden, won the Nobel prize in 1966. Her work is readily available in a number of excellent recent translations.

    Other famous poets of the Holocaust include Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, Italian essayist Primo Levi and Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti.

    But the stories told by these famous poets, important though they are, can only give a partial picture. Often the fine details of everyday experience, the fears and hopes of individual women, men and children, have a particular resonance in the work of lesser-known poets.

    Romanian-German poet Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger was only 17 when she wrote her poetry of fearful anticipation. She was transported to a concentration camp where she died a year later.

    Lithuanian poet Matilda Olkinaitė was murdered at 19. How would their poetry have developed had they lived? We will never know. But what they have left us, recreated through their translators, is a highly sensitive view of life in the chaos of approaching catastrophe.

    Voices in anthologies

    For readers who want a fuller picture of Holocaust poetry, anthologies are invaluable. They usually have an introduction, or notes, providing the context that is so crucial to understanding the poems.

    Two older anthologies, Holocaust Poetry by Hilda Schiff (1995) and Beyond Lament by Marguerite Striar (1998) are still very useful.

    More recently, I co-edited the anthology Poetry of the Holocaust (2019), which arose from a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Our aim was to collect less well-known Holocaust poetry, and, with the help of 35 translators from languages as varied as Yiddish, Norwegian, Japanese and Hungarian, to present the poems in original and translation, with a contextual note for each.

    We tried to include a broader range of poems than earlier anthologies have tended to do. The anonymous Song of the Roma, for example, laments the fate of the more than 200,000 Gypsy, Roma and Traveller victims of the Nazis.

    Many poems in the anthology document very specific events, such as French writer Andrė Sarcq’s To the Twice-Murdered Men, which depicts the dreadful detail of his lover’s death at the hands of the Nazis, who treated gay men with unfathomable barbarity.

    Polish Resistance member Irena Bobowska suffered the cruel removal of the wheelchair upon which she depended. She imagined the world she has lost in So I Learn Life’s Greatest Art.

    German poet Alfred Schmidt-Sas wrote with extreme difficulty, as his hands were bound. He reflected on his imminent beheading in Strange Lightness of Life. And in My God, French poet Catherine Roux told of the horrifying and mundane details of her arrival in a concentration camp: “I’ve no hair / I’ve no hanky.”

    It is only by listening to these individual voices that we can really begin to understand what the many millions of Holocaust victims went through, and what victims of genocides all over the world have suffered and are suffering at this moment. Poetry helps us to do this.

    Jean Boase-Beier acts as Translations Editor for Arc Publications. She has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for research relevant to this article.

    – ref. The Holocaust poets who can help us to understand genocides past and present – https://theconversation.com/the-holocaust-poets-who-can-help-us-to-understand-genocides-past-and-present-248205

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Yorkshire company fined for polluting river with bleach

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    A Huddersfield company has been fined and ordered to pay costs totalling almost £9,000 after it polluted a river with bleach and killed hundreds of fish.

    Specialist packing company Liquipak Ltd, based at Queens Mill Business Centre at Queens Mill Road, appeared at Kirklees Magistrates’ Court on Thursday 9 January 2025, where it pleaded guilty to an illegal discharge of bleach.

    The court heard that in September 2021 the bleach – sodium hypochlorite – escaped after a wooden pallet collapsed. The spilt bleach was flushed into surface water drains which discharge into the River Holme where it meets the River Colne in Huddersfield.

    Over 800 dead fish were counted 3kms downstream in the River Colne, as well as dead aquatic invertebrates, such as insects that live in water.

    In mitigation the court heard the company was deeply remorseful and that it was an unfortunate accident. The court also heard the company had introduced new handling procedures for its containers and had obtained a drainage plan.

    The company was ordered to pay a fine of £2,666.67 after being given credit for an early guilty plea in addition to a victim’s surcharge and prosecution costs bringing the total amount to £8,973.67.

    Thorough investigation after reports of pollution

    Environment Agency Environment Officer Peter Kirton said:

    Companies have a responsibility to ensure their activities do not have serious environmental impacts.

    It’s important they understand their site drainage and the difference between surface and foul drains.

    We carried out a thorough investigation into this pollution incident and the company has since taken steps to ensure there is no recurrence in future.

    The court heard the liquid was stored in containers – those containing liquids are stored inside the warehouse and empty containers outside.

    In September 2021 the Environment Agency received a report of dead fish in the River Colne. Officers attended and their investigation traced the source to Liquipak.

    The company explained there had been a spillage of bleach inside the warehouse, which happened when a wooden pallet the containers were stacked on gave way, resulting in some of them toppling and spilling.

    The contents went down a manhole cover in the warehouse. It hadn’t been reported to the Environment Agency because the company thought the manhole led to the foul sewer.

    An Environment Agency officer used green dye to trace the discharge from the manhole, confirming it was a surface water drain that led to the river.

    While the court agreed the incident was negligent, it accepted there were mitigating circumstances including that the company co-operated fully with the investigation, carried out a clean-up and has since taken steps around storage and operation to prevent it happening again in the future. The court accepted the offence was not commercially motivated.

    Pollution incidents can be reported to the Environment Agency on its 24-hour incident hotline, 0800 807060.

    Background

    Full charge

    On 2 September 2021 Liquipak Ltd caused a water discharge activity, namely the discharge of Sodium Hypochlorite into inland freshwaters, namely the River Holme at its confluence with the River Colne, otherwise than in accordance with an environmental permit.

    Contrary to Regulations 12(1)(b) and 38(1)(a) Environmental Permitting (England & Wales) Regulations 2016.

    Updates to this page

    Published 24 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Nations: The 2025 Call for nominations UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes is open

    Source: UNESCO World Heritage Centre

    From Borneo to Tikal, from Longyearbyen to Puerto Toro, UNESCO is calling on communities around the world to celebrate and protect some of the planet’s most stunning cultural landscapes. Nominations are now open for the UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes.

    This prestigious award honours the deep connections communities have forged with their environments and encourages further efforts in the knowledge, practice, and research necessary to protect these landscapes. The Prize includes a US$30,000 endowment and emphasizes the crucial role of cultural landscape preservation in safeguarding our shared heritage while inspiring future action.

    Established in 1995 in tribute to the iconic Greek actress and former Minister of Culture, Melina Mercouri, the Prize has recognised outstanding conservation efforts for over two decades, promoting the sustainable management of cultural landscapes in alignment with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

    Who Should Apply?

    Whether you represent a community, an institution, or NGO focused on the safeguarding and enhancement cultural landscapes, this is your opportunity to gain international recognition. Cultural landscapes are powerful symbols of the connection between people and nature, offering living narratives of human history and creativity.

    Key Details

    • Nominations must be submitted by governments, National Commissions for UNESCO, or professional organizations.
    • Nominated cultural landscapes do not need to be inscribed on the World Heritage List to be eligible.
    • Sites under review for possible inscription on the World Heritage List in 2025 are not eligible.

    How to Apply

    Submit your application online by 30 April 2025 (midnight CET, UTC+1). For full details and to apply, visit the UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes website.

    Do not miss this opportunity to showcase the importance of cultural landscapes for sustainable development and ensure that your work receives the recognition it deserves.

    Apply

    The nomination process takes place online only on the UNESCO website. Online nominations must be submitted in English or French no later than 30 April 2025 (midnight CET, UTC+1).

    English French

    Introduction leaflet of the UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes

    EnglishFrench

    For further information visit: UNESCO-Greece Melina Mercouri International Prize for the Safeguarding and Management of Cultural Landscapes

    Questions can be directed to the Secretariat of the Prize at: melinamercouriprize@unesco.org

    MIL OSI United Nations News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Six people charged with the murder of a man in Haringey

    Source: United Kingdom London Metropolitan Police

    A further two men have been charged with the murder of a man in Haringey, following an investigation by homicide detectives. This takes the total charged to six people.

    Gregory Castillo Volquez, aged 36, was stabbed at an address on Tiverton Road, Haringey on Monday, 13 January.

    Gabriel Francisco Pineda Gonzalez, aged 20 (17.04.2004) of High Trees, SW2 appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Friday, 17 January.

    Benito Ramirez Kones, aged 19 (27.06.2005) of Fermain Court East, N1 appeared at Willesden Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, 23 January. Both were charged with murder.

    The above comes after three men and a woman were charged on Wednesday, 15 January.

    • Carlos Alfredo Ramirez Tavarez, aged 27 (24.08.1996) of Tiverton Road, N15
    • Edison Dario Canario Perez, aged 22 (6.6.2001) of Tiverton Road, N15
    • Joan Perea, aged 20 (07.10.2004) of Tiverton Road, N15
    • Naiara Lizeth Hernandez-Bonilla, aged 20 (2.6.2004) of Birnam Road, N4

    They have been remanded in custody. A trial is due to begin on Monday, 20 October at the Old Bailey.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Avian Influenza Prevention Zone

    Source: Scottish Government

    Zone declared in Scotland and England.

    Following an increase in the number of detections of avian influenza (bird flu) in wild birds and other captive birds, the Deputy Chief Veterinary Officer from Scotland and Chief Veterinary Officer from England have declared a national Avian Influenza Prevention Zone (AIPZ) to mitigate the risk of the disease spreading amongst poultry and other captive birds.

    This means that from 12:00 noon on Saturday 25 January, it will be a legal requirement for all bird keepers in Scotland and England to follow strict biosecurity measures to help protect their flocks from the threat of avian flu.

    Surveillance has indicated that the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 virus is currently circulating in wild birds in the UK and their risk to poultry and other captive birds is currently assessed as being very high. Maintaining strict biosecurity is the most effective method of protecting birds from the virus.

    Keepers with more than 500 birds will need to restrict access for non-essential people on their sites, workers will need to change clothing and footwear before entering bird enclosures and site vehicles will need to be cleansed and disinfected regularly to limit the risk of the disease spreading. Backyard owners with smaller numbers of poultry including chickens, ducks and geese must also take steps to limit the risk of the disease spreading to their animals.

    Public Health Scotland advises that the risk to public health from the virus is very low and Food Standards Scotland advises that avian influenzas pose a very low food safety risk for consumers. Properly cooked poultry and poultry products, including eggs, are safe to eat.

    Scotland’s Deputy Chief Vet Officer Jesus Gallego said;

    “While the risk to public health is very low, we are currently experiencing a heightened risk of an incursion from this virus and so it is vital that appropriate precautions are taken to protect poultry and other captive birds from infection.  The introduction of this zone is a preventative measure, aimed at minimising the effect that this, often devastating virus, can have on Scottish kept birds”.

    Background

    Avian influenza (bird flu) outbreaks – gov.scot

    Avian influenza (bird flu): how to spot and report the disease – gov.scot

    Wild bird surveillance – Avian influenza (bird flu): how to spot and report the disease – gov.scot

    The AIPZ means bird keepers across Scotland and England must:

    • Keep free ranging birds within fenced areas, and ponds, watercourses and permanent standing water must be fenced off (except in specific circumstances, e.g. zoo birds)
    • Cleanse and disinfect footwear and keep areas where birds live clean and tidy;
    • Minimise movement in and out of bird enclosures;
    • Reduce any existing contamination by cleansing and disinfecting concrete areas, and fencing off wet or boggy areas
    • Keep domestic ducks and geese separate from other poultr
    • Ensure the areas where birds are kept are unattractive to wild birds, for example by netting ponds, and by removing wild bird food sources;
    • Feed and water your birds in enclosed areas to discourage wild birds;

    Keepers should familiarise themselves with our avian flu advice at http://www.gov.scot/avianinfluenza and report suspicion of disease to your local APHA Field Services Office.

    The Avian Influenza Prevention Zone will be in place until further notice and will be kept under regular review as part of the government’s work to monitor and manage the risks of bird flu.

    Do not touch or pick up any dead or visibly sick birds that you find. Wild birds can carry several diseases that are infectious to people. In Great Britain, if you find at the same time:

    • a single dead bird of prey, swan, goose, duck or gull or
    • five or more dead wild birds of any other species

    you should report them on gov.uk’s report dead wild birds page.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Heritage Action funding sees new town maps installed around Newport 24 January 2025 Newport and Carisrbrooke Community Council have installed five new town maps

    Source: Aisle of Wight

    Heritage Action Zone funding from Historic England has given Newport and Carisbrooke Community Council’s Shaping Newport project the opportunity to install additional maps of Newport around the town at various entry points. The funding was used to install five more maps last week, following on from the first map installation which was funded by the Isle of Wight Chamber and installed in 2019.

    There are now six town maps, located at Lord Lois Library, Newport Bus Station, Chapel St Carpark, Post Office Lane and Quay Street. The map was created seven years ago by Alan Rowe and took six months to design. It highlights key locations in the town, like notable buildings including Newport Minster and the Guildhall, al fresco dining spots and independent shops and was produced by local business A.J Wells.

    There is an audio overview available, developed by local charity Sight for Wight, and an online version is hosted on the Newport and Carisbrooke Community Council’s website: https://www.newportwight.org.uk/newport-town-map. These are accessed via a QR code printed on the maps.

    Another QR code will take you to the Historic Newport Walks website: http://historicalnewport.org, where you can access free historic walking trails around the town.

    Councillor Julie Jones Evans, cabinet member for Economy, Regeneration, Culture and Leisure said: “Seeing this beautiful map now in 6 locations around the town, not only is useful for visitors but is also public art.”

    “It’s beautifully illustrated by Alan Rowe and printed in lasting high-quality enamel by King’s Award for Enterprise recipients A.J. Wells who are based in the County Town.”

    “Having the opportunity for funds from Historic England to produce 5 updated versions was something to be grabbed with both hands. Thanks also to Shaping Newport for making this happen.”

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI: Feather Your Trades: Bounce Back Stronger from Trading Losses

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NICOSIA, Cyprus, Jan. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PU Prime is launching Feather Your Trades, a promotion designed to help traders recover from losses and trade with confidence. From 15 January to 15 February 2025, clients can redeem up to $30 in Trade Loss Vouchers to offset losses on selected closed trades.

    How It Works:

    1. Claim Your Vouchers: Redeem $30 worth of Trade Loss Vouchers ($5 x 6) via the PU Prime App.
    2. Apply to Closed Trades: Use the vouchers to partially cover your trading losses.
    3. Bounce Back Smarter: Regain momentum and refine your strategies.

    Eligibility:

    Available to new and existing clients with Standard or Islamic Standard Accounts. Each client can redeem the vouchers once during the promotion.

    Why Join?

    • Easy to Use: Redeem and apply vouchers directly through the app.
    • Boost Confidence: Offset losses and trade with a clearer mindset.
    • Inclusive: Open to traders of all experience levels.

    Take advantage of Feather Your Trades and bounce back stronger. Visit the PU Prime App or website to learn more and redeem your vouchers!

    For media inquiries, please contact the PR team via media@puprime.com.

    About PU Prime

    Founded in 2015, PU Prime is a leading global fintech company providing innovative online trading solutions. Today, we offer regulated financial products across various asset classes, including forex, commodities, indices, and cryptocurrencies. Committed to providing advanced technology and educational resources, PU Prime supports traders and investors at every stage, from beginner to professional. With a presence in over 120 countries and exceeding 40 million app downloads, PU Prime is dedicated to enabling financial success and fostering a global community of empowered traders.

    Organization: PU Prime
    Contact Person Name: Qianyi Hong
    Website: https://www.puprime.com/
    Email: media@puprime.com
    Phone No.: 3571 1111 111
    Address 01: 62 Athalassas, Mezzanine, Strovolos, 2012, Nicosia, Cyprus

    Disclaimer: This content is provided by the PU Prime. The statements, views, and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the content provider. The information shared in this press release is not a solicitation for investment, nor is it intended as investment, financial, or trading advice. It is strongly recommended that you conduct thorough research and consult with a professional financial advisor before making any investment or trading decisions. Please conduct your own research and invest at your own risk.

    A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/67ec54b3-5b59-4e7b-a12f-8f323577be1f

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI Video: UK St Stephen’s Hall, 120 years later on… ⏳

    Source: United Kingdom UK Parliament (video statements)

    St Stephen’s Hall stands on the site of the royal Chapel of St Stephen’s. This is where the House of Commons sat until the Chapel was destroyed by the fire of 1834. It is one of the main routes taken by members and visitors to Central Lobby and both chambers.

    Have you walked through the Hall on a visit to Parliament?

    Then A photo of St Stephen’s Hall looking into Central Lobby, 1905, ©Parliamentary Archives.

    Now A smartphone video of the same view, 2025.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suNcG6jJerU

    MIL OSI Video –

  • MIL-OSI Europe: International Day of Education (24.01.25)

    Source: Republic of France in English
    The Republic of France has issued the following statement:

    On this International Day of Education, France renews its commitment to a lifelong quality education that is both inclusive and equitable. In keeping with our new international strategy on basic education (2024-2028), we are working with our partners to ensure that education has a prominent place on the international agenda.

    With 250 million children worldwide still deprived of schooling, Minister Delegate for Franophonie and International Partnerships Thani Mohamed-Soilihi welcomed those who make education their priority on a daily basis at the Hôtel du Ministre today.

    This event, which was organized in partnership with UNESCO, AFD and Coalition Éducation, reaffirmed the importance of investing in education for sustainable development and the key role it plays for peace and the protection of human rights, especially the rights of children. Two roundtables featured representatives of civil society groups, international organizations and AFD, as well as young activists, who discussed possible solutions to educational issues in anticipation of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, which will be held in Seville this summer.

    In 2024, the Minister Delegate for Francophonie reasserted the priority importance of education and training for French-language learning at the Villers-Cotterêts Francophonie summit. The new Collège international de Villers-Cotterêts will offer training in French-language educational frameworks as well as residences for teachers and education researchers in a multilingual environment.

    In 2025, the education of girls and gender equality in and through education will be central themes of the Feminist Foreign Policy Conference to be held in Paris.

    MIL OSI Europe News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Met officer convicted of rape

    Source: United Kingdom London Metropolitan Police

    A Met officer has been convicted of rape following an investigation by detectives.

    PC Samuel McGregor, 33, previously attached to the Central North Command Unit was found guilty of rape on Friday, 24 January following a trial at Inner London Crown Court.

    He had previously pleaded not guilty to rape at Inner London Crown Court Crown Court on 23 June 2023.

    Chief Superintendent Andy Carter, in charge of policing for Central North: “I am sickened by McGregor’s abhorrent behaviour and the pain he has caused the victim.

    “There is simply no place for individuals like McGregor in the Met, and we will continue to root out such vile individuals.

    “I am proud of the officers who throughout the investigation displayed the care and compassion deserved by the victim, as they carried out interviews and gathered forensic evidence to show the extent of the abuse and develop a watertight case against McGregor.   

    “Above all, I am pleased to see today’s result, which I hope brings some closure to the victim.

    “Now that criminal proceedings have taken place, McGregor will face a misconduct hearing at the earliest opportunity.”

    The court heard that the victim, who was known to McGregor, had been raped on 11 May 2021 at an address in London. She confided this incident to her colleagues at a later date, and they reported it to officers on the victim’s behalf on 2 June 2021. McGregor was swiftly arrested the day after, on suspicion of rape.

    A misconduct hearing will take place in due course.

    Sentencing will be held on Monday, 10 March.

    McGregor was suspended from duty on 3 March 2022 after he admitted lying during a police interview.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI: Fidelity D & D Bancorp, Inc. First Quarter 2025 Dividend

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    DUNMORE, Pa., Jan. 24, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Board of Directors of Fidelity D & D Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: FDBC), parent company of The Fidelity Deposit and Discount Bank, announce their declaration of the Company’s 2025 first quarter dividend of $0.40 per share, a 5% increase above the prior year’s first quarter dividend paid of $0.38 per share. The dividend is payable March 10, 2025 to shareholders of record at the close of business on February 14, 2025.

    Fidelity D & D Bancorp, Inc. serves Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northampton and Lehigh Counties through The Fidelity Deposit and Discount Bank’s 21 full-service community banking offices, along with the Fidelity Bank Wealth Management Minersville Office in Schuylkill County. Fidelity Bank provides a digital and virtual experience via digital services and digital account opening through Online Banking and the Fidelity Mobile Banking app.

    For more information visit our investor relations web site through http://www.bankatfidelity.com.

    This press release may contain forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results and trends could differ materially from those set forth in such statements due to various factors. These factors include the possibility that increased demand or prices for the company’s financial services and products may not occur, changing economic, interest rate and competitive conditions, technological developments and other risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
     
    Contacts:              
    Daniel J. Santaniello
    President and Chief Executive Officer
    570-504-8035    		   Salvatore R. DeFrancesco, Jr.
    Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer
    570-504-8000
         

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: expert reaction to Defra denying emergency authorisation to Cruiser SB (a neonicotinoid pesticide)

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    Scientists comment to the Government’s decision to not grant emergency authorisation to a neonicotinoid pesticide. 

    Dr Scott Hayward, Lecturer and Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of Birmingham, said:

    “Definitely an evidence based decision. Ongoing research clearly shows significant effects of neonicotinoids on several pollinators species.  Research interest, and thus data, has been dominated by pollinator projects to date, but important to recognise that this is a biodiversity concern beyond just pollinators. There will be impacts on other insects and invertebrates (especially in the soil).

    “Our own work shows sub-lethal doses, as low as 9 ppb (parts per billion) can negatively affect bumble bee (Bombus terrestris) performance.  Some other bee and fly species species we’ve assessed don’t seem quite as vulnerable as B. terrestris – but we’ve only looked at relatively short (24 h) durations of exposure and very few species.

    “Sugar beet is somewhat of a special case because it doesn’t produce flowers until year 2 of growth, so the concerns that neonics are transferred to the pollen and/or nectar of the plant via seed coating is less of an issue than for other crops – because it is harvested before it produces flowers. However, even seed coating leaves neonic residues in the environment. 

    “Several ongoing projects are trying to model how residues persist in the environment across different habitat types and assess to risk to pollinators and other insects more generally.

    “Less data on what impact alternative pesticides might have, but simple fact is that pesticides targeting fundamental biological functions in pest species will likely have the same (sometimes greater) effects in non-target species.”

     

    Prof Dave Goulson, Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex, said:

    “For the last 4 years, our government ignored the recommendations of the Health and Safety Executive and the Expert Committee on Pesticides, both of which were of the opinion that this derogation request should not be granted. It is pleasing to see that our new government have followed scientific advice and refused the request. There is overwhelming evidence that neonicotinoids harm bees and other wildlife, and contaminate soils, waterways and wildflowers. There is no safe way to use them.

    “Farmers across Europe have been growing sugar beet without use of neonicotinoids, so this should not be an insurmountable problem.”

     

    Prof Toby Bruce, Professor of Insect Chemical Ecology at Keele University, said:

    “What are farmers supposed to do to protect their crops? Without insecticides sugar beet growers face up to 50% crop losses. If the government plans to ban pesticides (neonicotinoids in this case), then it should also plan to fund research into development of alternative approaches. The situation was previously considered an emergency because farmers are left with no control measures and have no way of protecting their crops from insect pests and the serious crop diseases that they transmit”.

    Declared interests

    Toby Bruce: “I don’t have any interests to declare.”

    No others received.

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Supporting growth through regulatory reform: response from Environment Agency CEO to the Prime Minister

    Source: United Kingdom – Government Statements

    A response from Philip Duffy, Chief Executive of the Environment Agency to the Prime Minister on a new approach to regulators and regulations to support economic growth.

    Applies to England

    Documents

    Supporting growth through regulatory reform: response from Environmental Agency CEO to the Prime Minster

    PDF, 201 KB, 5 pages

    This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

    Request an accessible format.
    If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email defra.helpline@defra.gov.uk. Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

    Details

    A letter to the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade from Philip Duffy, the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency.

    It outlines how the Environment Agency will support a new approach to regulators and regulations to support economic growth.

    This is a response to a letter from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, dated 24 December 2024.

    Updates to this page

    Published 24 January 2025

    Sign up for emails or print this page

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Trump inherits the Guantánamo prison, complete with 4 ‘forever prisoners’

    Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lisa Hajjar, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara

    A control tower overlooks the Camp VI detention facility, at Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. AP Photo/Alex Brandon

    President Joe Biden’s record of handling the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is decidedly mixed. He succeeded in reducing the detainee population he inherited by more than half, but he compounded problems in the military commissions that the Bush administration had invented in the wake of the 9/11 attacks to try people captured in the “war on terror.” Now all the problems at Guantánamo are again President Donald Trump’s.

    When Biden took office in 2021, there were 40 prisoners. Today there are 15, the lowest number since the first 20 Muslim men and boys captured in Afghanistan were airlifted to the base on Jan. 11, 2002.

    Biden left Trump four people the U.S. will not release but also cannot put on trial – the so-called “forever prisoners.” He also left intact the troubled military commissions system, with three pending criminal cases against a total of six detainees.

    In December 2021, former chief military defense attorney Brig. Gen. John Baker testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee: “It is too late in the process for the current military commissions to do justice for anyone. The best that can be hoped for at this point … is to bring this sordid chapter of American history to an end.” Baker made clear that the only viable option is to resolve the cases with plea bargains for the defendants.

    Marine Brig. Gen. John Baker tells U.S. senators that there is no opportunity for justice to be done at Guantánamo.

    A chance to make progress

    There are three cases that have not yet gone to trial – the 9/11 case with four defendants facing charges for their connections with the attacks, the USS Cole bombing in October 2000 with one defendant and the Bali bombing in October 2002 with one defendant.

    The 9/11 and USS Cole cases have been stuck in the pretrial phase since Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president. In the summer of 2024, a breakthrough in the 9/11 case appeared imminent: Prosecutors and defense lawyers for three of the four defendants reportedly reached plea-bargain agreements. Khalid Sheikh Mohammad – the alleged “mastermind” of the attacks – Walid bin Attash and Mustafa Hawsawi agreed to plead guilty and accept life sentences in exchange for the government taking the death penalty off the table. There was no deal for the fourth 9/11 defendant, Ammar al-Baluchi.

    The deals were approved on July 31 by the top military officer overseeing the Guantánamo commissions, retired Brig. Gen. Susan Escallier. But two days later, Biden’s defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, stepped into the process and overrode Escallier – whom he had appointed. Austin announced that the plea deals were revoked.

    The judge, Air Force Col. Matthew McCall, decided to schedule plea hearings for early January. But after some legal back-and-forth that forced a stay, he had to cancel them. Biden left the case against three 9/11 defendants in limbo.

    The basement of this government building in Bucharest, Romania, held a secret CIA prison, one of many across the world.
    AP Photo

    Witness to the transition

    In mid-January 2025, I made my sixteenth reporting trip to Guantánamo. I came for closing arguments on a motion in the 9/11 case that seeks to suppress statements that Ammar al-Baluchi made to the FBI in January 2007. That was four months after he and 13 others were transferred to Guantánamo from CIA black sites where they were held for years. The litigation to suppress those statements started in 2019.

    In Chapter 10 of my book, “The War in Court: Inside the Long Fight against Torture,” I detail how the litigation on this suppression motion made public previously unknown details and under-acknowledged horrors of the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation program.

    These closing arguments were the culmination of six years of litigation on the key question in the 9/11 case: Does torture matter in the pursuit of justice in the military commissions?

    A drawing by Guantánamo detainee Abu Zubaydah depicts a person being waterboarded.
    Copyright Abu Zubaydah 2019. Licensed by Professor Mark Denbeaux, Seton Hall Law School

    Can Guantánamo be closed?

    Of the 780 people ever detained at Guantánamo, 540 were released during the presidency of George W. Bush, who established the detention facility. Obama, who signed an executive order on his second day in office pledging to close Guantánamo within a year, released 200.

    In his first term, Trump pledged to keep the facility open. The only man to leave Guantánamo during Trump’s first term was Ahmed al-Darbi, who was repatriated to Saudi Arabia in 2018 to serve out the remainder of his sentence from a 2014 plea bargain agreement.

    When Biden took office, he said that he supported shutting down the military prison at Guantánamo. In the early years of his presidency, there was a slow stream of transfers, mostly people who had been cleared for release long ago and were freed.

    In Biden’s last months, the pace of transfers quickened. In December 2024, a Kenyan detainee, two Malaysian members of al-Qaida who had pled guilty the previous January, and a Tunisian man who had been in Guantánamo since the day the facility was opened were all repatriated to their countries of origin and freed. In January 2024, 11 Yemenis were transported from the prison to Oman to be resettled.

    15 men left behind

    The Biden administration had also planned to repatriate a severely disabled Iraqi detainee, Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, to serve out his plea-bargained sentence in a Baghdad prison. But a federal judge blocked that transfer, ruling that al-Iraqi would not get necessary medical treatment in Iraq and might be subject to abuse there.

    Al-Iraqi is one of the 15 that Biden left behind. Three of them – a Libyan, a Somali and a stateless Rohingya – have long been cleared for release. Their continuing detention without charges highlights a key element of the Guantánamo problem: No one can be released unless the U.S. government finds another country willing to accept them.

    One of the remaining detainees, Ali Bahlul, is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit war crimes. Six others, including the four 9/11 defendants, are awaiting their trials.

    There are also four detainees whom the government refuses to transfer but cannot put on trial for lack of evidence.

    The U.S. goverment says it cannot release Abu Zubaydah from Guantánamo because he would disclose classified interrogation techniques critics have labeled torture.
    U.S. Central Command via AP

    These so-called “forever prisoners” include Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born man of Palestinian descent who was taken into CIA custody in 2002 and was used as the guinea pig for the CIA torture program. The government long ago conceded that Abu Zubaydah was not a top leader of al-Qaida – in fact he was not even a member. But he will not be released because he knows how he was treated by the CIA, and that treatment remains highly classified.

    The newest forever prisoner is one of the original 9/11 defendants, Ramzi bin al-Shibh; in September 2023, he was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial. Now he is uncharged, unreleased and untreated for his psychological maladies that were caused by the torture he endured in CIA black sites.

    The ‘War on Terror’ is not over

    When Biden pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in August 2021, he claimed to have ended America’s longest war – and repeated this claim in a January 2025 speech. But the Guantánamo prison remains open, and as long as it is, the “war on terror,” which first put U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2001, is not over.

    How Trump will deal with Guantánamo is an open question. If he focuses on the death penalty, he will press ahead with military commission trials like his predecessors, hoping for unanimous guilty verdicts and death sentences. If he prioritizes cutting wasteful government spending, he will release additional detainees and allow the three plea bargain agreements to go into effect.

    No one I spoke to during my last trip was willing to predict what a second Trump term might bode for Guantánamo – except that it won’t be closed.

    Lisa Hajjar 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.

    – ref. Trump inherits the Guantánamo prison, complete with 4 ‘forever prisoners’ – https://theconversation.com/trump-inherits-the-guantanamo-prison-complete-with-4-forever-prisoners-247058

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Senator Marshall on Newsmax: President Trump Will Bring Manufacturing Jobs Back to the United States

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Kansas Roger Marshall

    Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. joined Newsmax: The Record with Greta Van Susteren to discuss President Trump’s Executive Actions in the first days in office and his economic plans, including the Trump tax cuts, returning manufacturing to the United States, and decreasing the United States’ reliance on trade with China. 
    Additionally, Senator Marshall discussed President Trump’s Executive Orders to remove the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO) and requiring NATO countries to pay 5% of their GDP on defense. 

    You may click HERE or on the image above to watch Senator Marshall’s full interview. 
    Highlights from Senator Marshall’s interview include:
    On President Trump’s tax cuts and plan for economic revival in the United States: 
    “Welcome to the world of Donald Trump. He did talk about decreasing the tax cuts to 15%, and I want Americans to remember what happened when we decreased it from 35% to 21%. I think number one is we saw record growth in federal government tax revenues, but we also saw 401k’s jump as well – so I think that this makes perfect sense to me. President Trump, the great negotiator out there – jobs, jobs, jobs. President Trump is trying to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.”
    “This is part of President Trump’s America First agenda. If you think about manufacturing, it’s energy cost, and then people – the labor is what determines what we can manufacture, the raw material. So I think he’s kind of thinking about all these pieces of the puzzle…” 
    On manufacturers returning to the Americas from China:
    “A lot of this is dependent upon raw earth materials – so I think you’ve already seen a lot of the manufacturers are bringing that to South America, and then a lot of it’s moving to Vietnam as well. India is doing a lot of it as well. So we need to keep moving those out of the Chinese market. Just like I told my farmers, you cannot depend on China, and I think all these big group purchasing organizations got caught with their pants down during COVID, and have realized that, and are indeed starting to move them back to the Americas.” 
    On President Trump’s executive order removing the United States from the WHO: 
    “We should have gotten out of the WHO years ago. To your point, what you’re describing when the World Health Organization said there was no person-to-person transmission, that COVID was already in three different countries… but yet they were denying it.”
    “I couldn’t agree with you more, the World Health Organization has gotten way outside of what its mission set should be. They should be focusing on clean water, on clean sewage, vaccines as well. But instead, they’re way outside of their mission. And they are bought and paid for by China.”
    On President Trump’s executive order requiring NATO countries to pay 5% of their GDP on defense: 
    “I was over in Belgium recently. NATO has made a huge, huge, incredible office building… and I said to myself, well, how many troops would that have paid for?”
    “[Europe] has over 100,000 of our troops. My son was one of them – just getting back from Poland – in Europe, protecting them. Europe needs to take care of themselves. Italy alone has a GDP the size of Russia. So certainly, Europe should be able to defend themselves against Russia. I don’t understand why we need that much money for NATO either.” 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: Woman jailed for the manslaughter of her four small sons after fatal fire in Sutton

    Source: United Kingdom London Metropolitan Police

    A mother has been given a ten year sentence for manslaughter after her four small sons were left alone at home and killed in a house fire in Sutton.

    The boys – two sets of twins, Bryson and Kyson Hoath, aged four, and Leyton and Logan Hoath, aged three – had been left alone at their home in Collingwood Road one evening in December just over three years ago when a fire broke out that would end their lives.

    Their mother, Deveca Rose, 30 (03.10.94), of Collingwood Road, Sutton, appeared at the Old Bailey on Friday, 24 January where she was sentenced to ten years in prison.

    The boys’ paternal grandmother, Kerrie, said:

    “This sentence marks the end of a three year ordeal.

    “Bryson, Kyson, Leyton and Logan were cruelly taken from us in a senseless act of negligence by their mother.

    “The disregard she showed towards them has been echoed throughout this trial, and our family have had to endure three years of lies, delays and false narratives, which has been a nightmare.

    “The toll it has taken on our family cannot be overstated.

    “The boys were beautiful, loving children who did not deserve this and the impact they made on us in their short lives cannot be measured.

    “We miss them every day and will always hold them in our heart.

    “We wish to thank the courts, the jury and the police for the work they have done to ensure the boys’ story has been heard and that justice is done.”

    Detective Chief Inspector Samantha Townsend of the Met’s Specialist Crime Command said:

    “This has been a deeply upsetting investigation for everyone involved.

    “Deveca Rose was a mother who placed her own self-interest above the safety of her children.

    “Had she not left the children to go shopping, she may have been able to put out the fire, or at the very least, got the children to safety.

    “Instead of taking responsibility for her actions, she invented a story that was built around a babysitter whose very existence could not be confirmed.

    “The sadness at the needless loss of four young lives is beyond our comprehension.

    “I cannot begin to imagine the devastation felt by the children’s wider family and loved ones and our thoughts are with them all today.”

    Ms Rose had previously been convicted of manslaughter at the same court on Thursday, 3 October and was bailed for sentencing. She was found not guilty of child neglect.

    The court heard that shortly after 19:00hrs on the night of Thursday, 16 December 2021, a passer-by on Collingwood Road realised the house was on fire.

    They alerted a neighbour who kicked in the front door in an attempt to reach the children, but the fire, having taken hold of the property, prevented their entry.

    Officers attended the scene, along with colleagues from the London Fire Brigade and the London Ambulance Service.

    Firefighters managed to bring the fire under control and recovered the four unconscious boys from an upstairs bedroom, whilst medics attempted to save them.

    Despite their efforts – treating the children at the scene – they sadly died in hospital.

    Their mother, Ms Rose, had left the boys alone to go shopping and returned whilst the house was on fire.

    She claimed the children had been left in the care of a woman called ‘Jade’, which prompted firefighters to go back into the house to search for Jade.

    No other people were found inside.

    Ms Rose was arrested on suspicion of child neglect that same night, and following interview, was released under investigation.

    Post-mortem examinations found the boys had died from inhalation of fire fumes, whist detectives undertook a meticulous investigation in order to identify the alleged babysitter, ‘Jade’.

    Detectives considered that the passer-by who raised the alarm may have been ‘Jade’, but the description of the woman who had alerted neighbours to the fire differed to the description of ‘Jade’ given by Deveca Rose.

    After Ms Rose described the circumstances of her meeting ‘Jade’ a few days before the fire, officers scoured hours of CCTV and could find no trace of them having met, to which Ms Rose responded with claims they had met on a minor road with no CCTV.

    In addition, examination of the call data on Ms Rose’s mobile phone showed no contact details for a ‘Jade’ and, when she had attempted to call ‘Jade’ from the scene of the fire, data showed that Ms Rose’s calls did not connect as the number was not viable, and the number was instead notably similar to her own phone number.

    CCTV enquiries in the area showed Ms Rose had also gone out alone the day before the fire.

    Investigators believed the fire was started in the living room on the ground floor either by a candle, tealight or a burning cigarette. Conditions inside the house were messy and unsanitary which helped the fire spread quickly.

    The children, who had been locked inside and were unable to escape the house, had fled to an upstairs bedroom where they would be overcome by smoke.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Chancellor appoints David Soanes and Niamh Moloney as members of the Prudential Regulation Committee

    Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments

    David Soanes and Niamh Moloney have been appointed as the new external members of Prudential Regulation Committee.

    Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has today confirmed that David Soanes and Niamh Moloney will join the Prudential Regulation Committee (PRC). They will both serve three-year terms on the Committee, which takes the most important decisions of the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), one of the UK’s financial regulators.

    They replace Jill May and Julia Black who completed their second terms in July 2024 and November 2024 respectively.

    David Soanes has been a career investment banker specialising in Financial Services, who has also sat on the board of UK Finance and the Leadership Council of The CityUK, and he is a former UK Country Head at UBS.

    Niamh Moloney is Professor of Financial Markets Law in the Law School at the London School of Economics and Political Science and is an Independent Non-Executive Director of the board of the Central Bank of Ireland. She specialises in financial regulation, institutional structures and supervision.

    Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer said:

    I am pleased to announce the appointments of David Soanes and Niamh Maloney to the Prudential Regulation Committee of the Bank of England.

    Both appointments will bring extensive experience of financial services to the role, and will support the regulators renewed focus on growth.

    Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England said:

    I am very pleased to welcome David Soanes and Niamh Moloney to the Prudential Regulation Committee. Between them they bring a great deal of experience and expertise to the role, and the committee’s work will benefit greatly from their insight.

    Updates to this page

    Published 24 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI Security: No stone left unturned: 6 tonnes of cocaine and EUR 6 million seized in large drug sting

    Source: Europol

    The Spanish Civil Guard (Guardia Civil), supported by Europol, has dismantled a large-scale drug trafficking network in an investigation involving Bulgaria, Colombia, Costa Rica and Panama. The suspects were allegedly involved in the reception and wholesale distribution of cocaine across the EU, as well as in money laundering. The sting was coordinated by Europol’s Operational Taskforce.Network spans Latin America, Europe…

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Coming up next week at the London Assembly W/C 27 January

    Source: Mayor of London

    PUBLIC MEETINGS

    Tuesday 28 January

    Planning and Tall Buildings

    Planning and Regeneration Committee – Chamber, City Hall, Kamal Chunchie Way, 10am

    The Planning and Regeneration Committee will ask guests ask guests from industry and the London Tenants Federation about issues including residents’ experiences of living in tall buildings and how they vary among different groups, the characteristics of successful tall buildings, and the extent to which high-rise buildings meet Londoners’ housing needs.

    Guests include:

    Panel 1 – 10am – 11.15am:

    • Stuart Baillie, Partner and Head of Planning, Knight Frank
    • Russell Whitehead, Director, Robert Bird Group
    • Chris Edgington, Associate Director – Building Services, ARUP
    • Additional guests TBC

    Panel 2 – 11.30am – 12.30pm:

    • Kath Scanlon, Distinguished Policy Fellow and Deputy Director, LSE London
    • Pat Turnbull, Regional Delegate, London Tenants Federation

    MEDIA CONTACT: Josh Hunt on 07763 252310 / [email protected]  

     

    Wednesday 29 January

    Q&A with the Met Police

    Police and Crime Committee – Chamber, City Hall, Kamal Chunchie Way, 10am

    The London Assembly Police and Crime Committee will question the Metropolitan Police Service and the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime on the work being done in relation to grooming gangs in London, and to understand what impact the national audit will have in London.

    The guests are:

    • Kaya Comer-Schwartz, Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime 
    • Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist KPM, Frontline Policing, Metropolitan Police Service
    • Claire Waxman OBE, London’s Independent Victims’ Commissioner

    MEDIA CONTACT: Anthony Smith on 07763 251727 / [email protected]
     

    Thursday 30 January

    HIV in London

    Health Committee – Chamber, City Hall, Kamal Chunchie Way, 10am

    The London Assembly Health Committee will discuss HIV prevention efforts in London, the work of HIV charities in London and international comparisons.

    The guests are:

    Panel 1 – HIV prevention in London (10:00 – 11:10):

    • Marc Thompson, Lead Commissioner, London HIV Prevention Programme
    • Mona Hayat, Director of Sexual Health, London Sexual Health Programme
    • Professor Kevin Fenton CBE, Statutory Health Advisor to the Mayor

    Panel 2 – HIV charities in London (11:15 – 12:25):

    • Judi Otti, Head of HIV Services, Africa Advocacy Foundation
    • Mark Santos, Executive Director, Positive East
    • Kat Smithson, CEO, British Association for Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH)
    • Joel Robinson, CEO, Spectra
    • Tony Wong, CEO, METRO Charity

    Panel 3 – International comparisons (12:30 – 13:00):

    • Elske Hoornenborg, Head of the Center for Sexual Health and medical doctor specialised in internal medicine and infectious diseases, Public Health Service of Amsterdam

    MEDIA CONTACT: Anthony Smyth on 07763 251727 / [email protected]

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: Highland Winter Road Conditions Report – Friday 24 January 2025 (Storm Eowyn)

    Source: Scotland – Highland Council

    The information provided is a summary of reports from operational staff and is intended to give a general indication of typical conditions in each area at a point in time.  It is not intended to imply that any individual route is entirely snow and ice free and drivers must be aware that conditions can change rapidly and make their own assessment of conditions for travelling.

    Maps of the Council’s gritting routes by priority and policy are available online.  

    The Met Office has both Amber and Yellow warnings for Highland as follows:

    • Amber Warning for wind across the northern half of Scotland. Valid 13:00 on Friday to 06:00 on Saturday. 
    • Yellow Warning for snow mainly across the high ground of Highlands. Valid 06:00 to 23:59 on Friday. Medium likelihood of Low impact.
    • Yellow Warning for Wind covering the whole of Scotland. Valid 00:01 to 23:59 on Friday.

    Highland Road Conditions Report for Friday 24 January 2025 are as follows – with no know issues to report:

    • East Ross-Shire (08:52) – Wet roads. No known issues.
    • Sutherland (08:08) – Wet roads and wind no known issues to report
    • Caithness  (07:39) – Wet roads high winds
    • Inverness (07:22)  – Roads wet, no issues
    • Badenoch and Strathspey (06:54) – Temperatures higher than forecast. Primary and Secondary routes being treated this morning as a precaution. No known overnight Issues.
    • Nairn (06:51) – Temps higher than forecast. Hill route being treated as a precaution. No known overnight issues.
    • Lochaber (09:00)- Positive temperatures across the area, very wet and windy, Corran Ferry off due to the weather conditions.
    • Skye and Raasay (05:47) – Positive road surface temperatures across area this morning. No overnight issues to report

    A number of schools are currently closed today due to the weather; 9 secondary schools: (3269 pupils); 38 Primary schools: (2528 pupils) and 29 Nurseries: (491 children).  For current details visit http://www.highland.gov.uk/schoolclosures – please note that this page is cleared at 4pm each day.

    Follow our social media channels to keep up-to-date with all Highland Council road issues – X @HighlandCouncil and Facebook

    For Corran Ferry information, follow: X @CorranFerry and Facebook @CorranFerryService and at https://www.highland.gov.uk/corranferry

    Information and flooding advice is available on our website

    Information on weather warnings is available on the Met Office website

    For information on Trunk Roads follow @trafficscotland

    For information on power cuts, visit SSEN website

    SEPA are the Scottish Environment Protection Agency – SEPA.

    Information and advice is also available at Ready Scotland and on X @ReadyScotland

    24 Jan 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –

  • MIL-OSI United Kingdom: New King’s Counsels welcomed by Lord Chancellor

    Source: United Kingdom – Government Statements

    His Majesty The King has approved the appointment of 105 barristers and solicitors as new King’s Counsel (KC) in England and Wales.

    His Majesty The King has approved the appointment of 105 barristers and solicitors as new King’s Counsel (KC) in England and Wales. The title of KC is awarded to those who have demonstrated particular skill and expertise in the conduct of advocacy. 

    The Lord Chancellor will preside over the appointment ceremony at Westminster Hall in March 2025, where she will formally bestow the title of KC upon the successful applicants.

    Further information

    • See the list of 2024 – 2025 Kings Counsel appointments.  
    • KCs are appointed by His Majesty The King, on the advice of the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor is in turn advised by an independent Selection Panel which receives and considers each application and makes recommendations as to appointment. 
    • The announcement of Honorary King’s Counsel awards will be made separately this year. 
    • For further information, please contact the Ministry of Justice press office. Follow us @MoJGovUK. 

    Updates to this page

    Published 24 January 2025

    MIL OSI United Kingdom –