On September 26, 2024, Chief Dwayne Laboucan of Driftpile Cree Nation, along with Council, Elders, community members, and representatives from Indigenous Services Canada, celebrated the start of construction of the Mihtatikaw Sipiy Health and Wellness Facility.
October 08, 2024 — Driftpile Cree Nation, Treaty 8 Territory, Alberta — Indigenous Services Canada
When we invest in healthcare, we invest in the prosperity of our communities. On September 26, 2024, Chief Dwayne Laboucan of Driftpile Cree Nation, along with Council, Elders, community members, and representatives from Indigenous Services Canada, celebrated the start of construction of the Mihtatikaw Sipiy Health and Wellness Facility.
With a total investment of $13 million from Indigenous Services Canada, the health centre will blend modern architecture, Indigenous cultural values and Cree symbolism, reflecting the Nation’s commitment to community health, healing and Cree heritage.
The project will bring together mental wellness and community health services under one roof, creating a central hub for holistic health support. The construction of the new health centre will replace an aging facility and double the footprint of health services to the community, from 527 square metres to 1,047 square metres. The centre will increase current health programming and offer enhanced mental wellness and community health services that meet the growing needs of the Driftpile Cree Nation.
Quotes
“The $13 million federal investment in Driftpile Cree Nation’s new Mihtatikaw Sipiy Health and Wellness Facility will provide community members with the essential health services that they need, incorporating Indigenous cultural values and traditional knowledge.”
The Honourable Patty Hajdu Minister of Indigenous Services
“We are proud of the new health centre being built for our people as it was needed so that we can take care of our own”
Chief Dwayne Laboucan Driftpile Cree Nation
Quick facts
The project began in 2021 and is expected to be completed in March 2026.
Driftpile Cree Nation is located in Treaty 8 Territory, nestled on the southern shore of Lesser Slave Lake in Northern Alberta. It has an on-reserve population of 1,041 and a total population of 3,223.
Through the Government of Canada’s Health Facilities Program, Indigenous Services Canada works with First Nations and Inuit communities to provide funding for infrastructure that supports the delivery of health-related programs and services.
Associated links
Contacts
For more information, media may contact:
Jennifer Kozelj Press Secretary Office of the Honourable Patty Hajdu Minister of Indigenous Services and Minister responsible for FedNor Jennifer.Kozelj@sac-isc.gc.ca
OTTAWA – On Friday, October 11, 2024, the Bank of Canada will release the third quarter issues of the Business Outlook Survey and the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations.
Time
10:30 (Eastern Time)
Lock-Up
At 09:00 (ET), journalists are invited to review the Business Outlook Survey and the Canadian Survey of Consumer Expectations, under embargo, at the Bank’s head office in Ottawa. Please use the Bank of Canada Museum entrance, located at 30 Bank Street (corner of Bank and Wellington), and bring photo ID.
For security reasons, journalists wishing to attend must confirm their presence by contacting Media Relations before noon (ET) on Thursday, October 10, 2024. Those who have not registered will not be admitted to the lock-up.
At 10:30 (ET), the lock-up ends and the embargo is lifted.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
More than 140 graduates have started at Sellafield Ltd.
Graduate intake event 2024.
Over 140 graduates have just started their exciting careers with the company in a range of business and technical disciplines, supporting Sellafield Ltd in its mission to create a clean and safe environment for future generations.
Our scheme aims to equip graduates with the skills, knowledge and behaviours necessary for a successful career in the nuclear industry, while offering the opportunity to build valuable professional networks.
One of the graduates who has just completed the two year scheme is commissioning engineer Anouschka Van Mourik.
Just before completing the scheme, Anouschka was honoured as Graduate of the Year thanks to her consistent work delivery and enthusiasm for undertaking new opportunities to develop her skills.
Anouschka Van Mourik, Graduate of the Year
Anouschka has also been involved in the Gender Balance network, mentoring scheme, and local events supporting the Institute of Engineering and Technology network as well as the Women in Nuclear group.
She said:
Being named Graduate of the Year was an incredible honour. The graduate scheme has been an amazing journey, rich with development and personal growth. I’ve not only advanced in my day-to-day job but also nurtured my passion for inspiring others to pursue careers in STEM.
After earning my degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Sellafield has played a vital role in further developing my skills and supporting my personal and professional growth.
As we celebrate the successes of our current graduates, we are also excited to look ahead to the future. Applications for the 2025 graduate scheme are now open, with roles available in a variety of areas ranging from engineering to project management and finance.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
Natural England is seeking views on a new Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the Yorkshire Wolds
An image of mist on the Yorkshire Wolds.
Natural England has today (8th October) launched a statutory and public consultation for proposed plans to designate part of the Yorkshire Wolds as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB).
This will be the formal consultation phase and will remain open for 14 weeks (closing midnight on the 13th January 2025). Local authorities and all interested parties can comment on the proposed AONB and the evidence which supports it.
AONBs were recently rebranded as National Landscapes however, in legal terms, Natural England would designate an AONB.
To avoid confusion, Natural England will use the term AONB throughout the consultation process. If an AONB is subsequently designated, it would then be known as a National Landscape.
Plans to designate a Yorkshire Wolds AONB are part of an ambitious programme of landscape designation and is one of four new projects to help deliver on the Government’s commitment to safeguard more of England’s beautiful and iconic landscapes for future generations.
The Yorkshire Wolds is a tranquil, beautiful landscape, known for dramatic steep sided dry valleys, high but gentle escarpments, dramatic coastal cliffs, and open, rolling agricultural plateaus.
Natural and cultural heritage in the area includes ancient woodland, species rich grasslands, chalk streams, Iron Age settlements, abandoned Medieval villages and Georgian manors and parkland. The Wolds also include a prominent chalk cliff and foothills rising from the Vale of York to the west and the Vale of Pickering to the north.
Designating this precious landscape as an AONB could bring many benefits including conserving and enhancing the area’s natural beauty and cultural heritage, as well as the magnificent views and tranquillity of the area.
It could give improved access to nature for the benefit of people’s health and wellbeing, whilst safeguarding an important landscape for future generations. AONBs can also boost economic growth and sustainable local tourism.
Paul Duncan, Deputy Director for Natural England, said:
The Yorkshire Wolds is a truly special area, and it is important that everyone, including people who live in and around the community, has their say in this national designation project.
We’re inviting anyone interested in this fantastic landscape to take the time to examine the proposals and provide their views and comments about the natural beauty of the Yorkshire Wolds, its condition, natural and cultural heritage, and scenic qualities. You can also comment on the desirability of the designation and the proposed boundary. Evidence that you provide could be vital in helping us refine our proposals.
Cllr Anne Handley East Riding of Yorkshire Council Leader, said:
I’m delighted that the Yorkshire Wolds, a large part of which is situated in East Riding, are being considered for national level designation.
We are very lucky to have a range of fabulous natural assets from the Wolds to the coast, which attracts millions of visitors each year. It is fantastic to see the area, with its outstanding natural beauty, considered for such a significant status.
Shaun Berry Head of Environment & Sustainability of North Yorkshire County Council said:
We know how important North Yorkshire’s beautiful natural landscape is, to the people who live and work in and around it, those who visit from across the UK and the world and the businesses that serve those visitors.
We already see these benefits in the county’s two National Parks and other areas of outstanding natural beauty in Nidderdale, the Howardian Hills and the Forest of Bowland, so I urge local people to have their say about this opportunity.
There will be a number of drop-in events and webinars to show the proposals and explain how people can have their say.
Details of these events, along with copies of the consultation documents, information about the designation process and what an AONB means are available to view and download on the consultation website here.
People will also have the chance to view the documents at the drop in events and in a small number of local libraries and local authority offices, details of which are on the website.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is asking patients who use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) or insulin pump to report any safety problem with their device through the MHRA Yellow Card scheme without delay.
Over 5.6 million people in the UK live with diabetes, many of whom rely on these devices to manage their condition, and their use can significantly improve the quality of life for patients.
However, adverse incidents relating to these devices can occur, and while most of these incidents do not result in harm to the patient, they can potentially lead to the incorrect amount of insulin which can lead to abnormal blood sugar levels, with potentially serious health consequences.
The MHRA utilises the Yellow Card reporting scheme for signal detection and trending activities to identify safety concerns that may require action. As of January 2023, the MHRA has received fewer than 300 Yellow Card reports from healthcare professionals and members of the public relating to these devices, which is significantly fewer than we would expect given their widespread use. The MHRA is therefore reminding users how to report adverse incidents and potential safety issues to us.
To aid this vital reporting, the MHRA has today, Tuesday 08 October, introduced new step-by-step guidance, giving individuals living with diabetes detailed information on how to report any safety concerns with their device and what information they need to include. This guidance provides examples of the types of issues which should be flagged and images to help guide users in their reporting.
Dr Alison Cave, MHRA Chief Safety Officer, said:
Patient safety is our top priority, which is why we urge anyone using devices to manage their diabetes to report to us without delay any safety concerns they may have. We know adverse incidents can occur with the use of these devices. The vast majority of these incidents don’t result in harm but potentially could have serious consequences.
Every report is valuable to us as it will provide valuable insight and potentially inform future regulatory measures designed to protect patients. We are ready to take whatever action is needed.
If you are concerned that there is an issue with any of your diabetes devices, please use the guidance [LINK] to complete a Yellow Card report online using the Yellow Card website or via the free Yellow Card app.
Douglas Twenefour, Head of Care at Diabetes UK, said:
Diabetes technology can be a life-changing tool, helping people living with the condition improve their quality of life.
Unfortunately, we know that sometimes this technology doesn’t work as intended, so it is important that users of diabetes tech have a clear and accessible way to report any issues with continuous glucose monitors, insulin pumps and pens.
Diabetes UK welcomes any guidance that gives reassurance for people using diabetes tech to highlight potential problems quickly and easily. We would encourage anyone with a concern about diabetes tech to report it, as this vital information can help improve the quality of devices.
However, if there is any immediate concern about technology that could affect a person’s safety, advice from an appropriate healthcare professional should be sought first.
Professor Partha Kar, NHS England Type 1 Diabetes & Technology lead, said:
We welcome this work and its important role in ensuring safety while we oversee the widespread adoption of diabetes technologies using continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps.
These devices can be life-changing for people living with diabetes, giving them the confidence to go about their days knowing they are safe and able to enjoy themselves, so their operationally effectiveness is of paramount importance.
This initiative will help to ensure standards stay at the highest level as the market continues to expand with new developers.
The MHRA also urges people to speak to a healthcare professional without delay if they have concerns that their health may have been impacted by a potential safety issue relating to their device.
Examples of the types of issue with continuous glucose monitors and insulin pumps that should be reported include:
Concerns with accuracy of delivery from the insulin pump (for example, suspected underdose or overdose, unexpected bolus doses, non-delivery of insulin)
Concerns with accuracy of results from a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). As part of your report, please tell us what the readings were on both the CGM and the approved blood glucose meter (see page 6) including the time elapsed between the 2 readings
Skin reaction to the sensor adhesive. If a patch test was carried out, please let us know.
Technology concerns, such as:
Connectivity issues between the various parts of the diabetes management system
Concerns with the touchscreen, display or buttons
Physical failures, including leaks and cracks
ENDS
Notes to editors
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for regulating all medicines and medical devices in the UK by ensuring they work and are acceptably safe. All our work is underpinned by robust and fact-based judgements to ensure that the benefits justify any risks.
The MHRA is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By Lee Banville, Professor and Director of the School of Journalism, University of Montana
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester speaks to union members at a Labor Day campaign stop on Sept. 2, 2024, in Billings, Mont. William Campbell/Getty Images
Jon Tester has never had it easy.
The three-term Democratic senator from Montana has scored more than 50% of the vote only once in his three runs for the U.S. Senate, attracting 50.3% of the vote in 2018 against state auditor and future U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale.
This year, Tester’s always-perilous path to reelection seems narrower and more harrowing than ever before. And the outcome could determine whether the Senate remains in Democratic control or flips to the Republicans.
Current polls and political prognosticators are even starting to turn on the moderate from the farming community of Big Sandy with the flattop haircut. FiveThirtyEight has Tester’s opponent, former Navy SEAL and businessman Tim Sheehy, up four percentage points, and the venerable Cook Political Report has gone so far as to say the race “leans Republican.”
“I used to always call Tester the unicorn candidate because there was no one like him,” she told my students a couple of weeks back. “He was a farmer, he was a rural Democrat, the last rural Democrat.”
Jon Tester, right, first won election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, when he beat Republican incumbent Conrad Burns, left, by a margin of 3,562 votes out of 406,505 cast. Win McNamee/Getty Images
The end of the unicorn?
I teach political reporting at the University of Montana School of Journalism, and every two years I send students out to interview candidates, profile races and talk with voters. It is true that the state has changed even since Tester won in 2018.
Despite an influx of outsiders over the past decade, Montana is still a sparsely populated state boasting 1.1 million people in the latest census. Though the state has historically relied on mining and timber for much of its economy, new economic activity in tourism and technology have helped fuel a 10% jump in population in the most recent census.
See, Montana has a history of doing something very few people do these days – ticket splitting, when a person votes in an election for candidates from opposing parties. In a time of deep polarization, it is hard to imagine, but out here in the Rocky Mountains and the northern plains, voters would consistently vote for a Republican for president and often for the Legislature, but also for Democrat Jon Tester.
Tester was able to put together a coalition of voters in the few pockets of liberals – college towns such as Missoula, union strongholds such as Butte and Indigenous voters on the reservation – and carve away enough moderate voters in more rural areas to eke out wins. When I moved here in 2009, it was not just Tester who did this. Back then, Montana had a Democratic governor, attorney general and head of schools. But over time those statewide offices have all gone, often by double digits, to Republicans.
The state saw a surge in population, jumping nearly 5% between 2020 and 2023, and experts such as political scientist Jeremy Johnson told my students earlier this fall that it is important to know who these new residents are.
“I still think the race, you know, can be competitive,” Johnson said. “I do think that some of my broader themes here – the polarization, the calcification, the reluctance to ticket split – makes it harder for Tester. Plus, I think there is some evidence that more Republican-leaning voters have moved to the state than Democrat-leaning voters in the last few years.”
Montana does not have party registration, so when you vote in a primary, they give you a ballot for both parties, and you choose the one you want to participate in. In the highly publicized U.S. Senate primary this year, only 36% of primary voters voted in the Democratic primary, while 64% chose to vote in the Republican primary.
The one question mark of 2024
Supporters of an abortion rights initiative at a rally on Sept. 5, 2024, in Bozeman, Mont., with Sen. Jon Tester, whose path to reelection may be helped by a large turnout of abortion rights voters. William Campbell/Getty Images
Still, in part to ensure that a later court decision could not strip away that right, voters have put CI-128 on the ballot this fall, which would explicitly include protection for abortion access in the state constitution.
Tester hit the issue hard in his last debate with Sheehy on Sept. 30, 2024.
“The bottom line is this: Whose decision is it to be made?” Tester said during the debate. “Is it the federal government’s decision, the state government’s decision, Tim Sheehy’s decision, Jon Tester’s decision? No, it’s the woman’s decision. Tim Sheehy’s called abortion ‘terrible’ and ‘murder.’ That doesn’t sound to me like he’s supporting the woman to make that decision.”
Tester’s supporters hope the initiative could inspire younger voters and moderate women to flock to the polls this fall, and that might make Tester’s path to reelection a bit more doable.
But it is going to take a bit of unicorn magic, perhaps, for Tester to win a fourth term.
Back at Montana State University, Bennion said the situation looks pretty dire for the Democrats in rural states.
“I don’t see, unless our state changes in a lot of different ways, I don’t see a Democrat winning in a long time,” he said. “Just the way our state is growing, the kind of person that is moving here and voting.”
Lee Banville 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.
Source: The Conversation – USA – By W. Joseph Campbell, Professor Emeritus of Communication, American University School of Communication
President Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, left, with Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat, greet crowds after Adlai Stevenson conceded defeat on Nov. 7, 1956.Bettmann/Getty Images
In response to national pollsters’ failure in forecasting election outcomes in 1948 and 1952, The New York Times pursued in 1956 a weekslong, multistate exercise in on-the-ground reporting to assess public opinion about the presidential race.
The Times’ experiment, which these days would be recognized as “shoe-leather reporting,” included two dozen journalists assigned to four teams that, in all, traveled to 27 battleground states over several weeks before the election – a rematch between President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, and his Democratic rival, Adlai E. Stevenson.
The reporting teams interviewed scores of Americans from all walks of life in an attempt to gauge voter preferences qualitatively – without relying on the data of preelection polls. One of the participating Times reporters declared afterward that the teams-based campaign coverage represented “a new departure in journalism.”
In unintended testimony to the challenges of measuring public opinion across a sprawling country, the Times’ coverage was no significant improvement over the polls. The Times’ reporting notably failed to anticipate the magnitude of Eisenhower’s reelection — a lopsided victory in which he carried 41 states.
In its final report before the election, the Times concluded that Eisenhower would win reelection but would fail to match the sweep of his landslide four years earlier. As it turned out, Eisenhower easily exceeded the dimensions of his victory in 1952, when his winning margin was 10.5 percentage points.
The Times’ coverage also failed to foresee Eisenhower’s state victories in 1956 in Virginia, Oklahoma and West Virginia, and markedly underestimated the president’s support in Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Texas, among other states.
The Times’ reporting experiment proved an imperfect substitute to election polling, as I discussed in a research paper presented recently to the American Journalism Historians Association. In the paper, I defined “shoe-leather reporting” as the gathering of newsworthy content through in-person interviews, document searches and on-the-scene observations. The idiom presumes that journalists will pursue fieldwork so energetically as to wear out their shoes.
“Shoe-leather reporting” has been long celebrated in American media; a widely published journalism educator has described the practice as “mythical” and “one of a very few gods an American journalist can officially pray to.”
New York Times staffer Max Frankel was taken off the rewrite desk in 1956 and sent knocking on doors ‘to gather voter sentiment’ in Wisconsin, Texas, Virginia and Missouri. Ban Martin/Archive Photos/Getty Images
Crises skew projections
The Times’ experiment in 1956 represents an exceptional case study about both the appeal and limitations of detailed, interview-based reporting as a method for measuring public opinion in a presidential race, especially when dramatic international events occur shortly before the election.
Such was the case in 1956, when the Egyptian government seized the Suez Canal, prompting military intervention by Israeli, British and French armed forces — a response that Eisenhower deplored. About the same time, Soviet tanks were ordered into Hungary to crush an uprising against communist rule and install a regime compliant to Moscow.
The international crises may have boosted the margin of victory for Eisenhower, an Army general during World War II, in a rally-round-the-president effect.
It was, in any event, polling failure that inspired the Times’ campaign coverage experiment.
Eight years earlier, in 1948, the polls, the press and pundits anticipated that Republican Thomas E. Dewey would oust Democrat Harry S. Truman, who had become president on the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1945.
The leading national pollsters of the time — George Gallup, Archibald Crossley and Elmo Roper — all predicted Dewey’s easy victory. Roper announced in early September 1948 that Dewey was so far ahead that he would stop releasing survey results. Dewey, said Roper, would win “by a heavy margin.”
Not surprisingly, Gallup, Crossley and Roper turned exceedingly cautious in evaluating the 1952 presidential race, maintaining as the campaign closed that either candidate could win.
Eisenhower, they said, seemed to hold a narrow lead but that Stevenson was closing fast. Or as the Times said in reporting about a public gathering of the pollsters shortly before the election: “The poll takers gave a slight edge in the popular vote to … Eisenhower, the Republican candidate, but this was their dilemma: How fast is … Stevenson, the Democratic nominee, catching up?”
Equivocation did not serve the pollsters well. None of them anticipated Eisenhower’s sweeping victory — a 39-state landslide.
The Times did not editorially rebuke pollsters for their misfire in 1952, but the newspaper’s editors, wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Max Frankel in his memoir, had “lost confidence in polls.”
To cover the 1956 presidential election, the Times de-emphasized opinion polls in favor of its own intensive, on-the-ground reporting that focused on states where the presidential race was believed to be closely contested.
The New York Times sent reporters across the country to interview people like these men listening to Democratic Party presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson on his October 1956 whistle-stop tour of the Midwest. Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Frankel, who rose through the ranks to become the Times’ executive editor, recalled being taken off the rewrite desk in 1956 and sent knocking on doors “to gather voter sentiment. I drove through odd precincts of Milwaukee and Austin (Texas), Arlington (Virginia) and St. Joseph (Missouri), feeding notes” to a colleague on one of the reporting teams.
The teams typically spent three days in a state, conducting interviews “with political scientists and policemen, leading politicians and bartenders, laborers, housewives and farmers,” the newspaper said.
The Times described its grassroots reporting as “surveys,” although they were not quantitative samples.
“Team members found value in not being tied to the arithmetic of polls,” one of the participants, Donald D. Janson, wrote in a post-election assessment for the Nieman Reports, a journalism industry publication.
“The scope and depth of the venture was a new departure in journalism,” Janson declared.
The process was impressionistic, even idiosyncratic. “Each reporter,” Janson wrote, “was free to judge each response, from politician and voter alike, for reliability.”
The Times published 36 state-specific preelection reports, including nine based on reporters’ follow-up visits to states where outcomes were expected to be especially close.
In its wrap-up report two days before the election, the Times said it “seemed doubtful” that Eisenhower’s margin “would be as great as it was in 1952.” In fact, Eisenhower’s victory in 1956 far surpassed that of 1952; in the rematch, he crushed Stevenson by more than 9.5 million votes.
The Times conceded in an after-election article that its teams-based coverage “did not anticipate the magnitude of the President’s victory,” which it attributed to the Suez crisis and turmoil in Hungary. The crises, the Times said, “apparently gave the final impetus to the Eisenhower landslide.”
No antidote for bad polls
The 1956 experiment in shoe-leather reporting was no rousing success. “There was some feeling,” Janson wrote afterward, “that the Times should stick to reporting trends and let the pollsters make the forecasts.”
Preelection polls by Gallup and Roper in 1956 accurately pointed to Eisenhower’s victory but overstated the president’s popular vote. Eisenhower won by 15 points; Gallup and Roper estimated his margin of victory would be 19 points. By 1956, Crossley had sold his business and retired from preelection polling.
Roper declared himself “personally pleased” by the outcome but reluctant to take “any bows for perfect accuracy.”
Given the unreliability of preelection polls in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Times had ample reason to experiment in seeking a more precise understanding of popular opinion. But as results of the 1956 election demonstrated, shoe-leather reporting was no antidote for the wayward polls.
W. Joseph Campbell 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.
Vice President Kamala Harris greets guests during a reception for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month at the White House in May 2022. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
In one of the most memorable moments of the current presidential campaign, Donald Trump in July 2024 contended that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris recently stopped identifying as Indian and “happened to turn Black.”
With these false remarks, Trump implied that Harris emphasized one part of her background to appeal to voters and then changed that to appeal to a different group of voters.
Lost within this controversy has been the underlying assumption in Trump’s comments, that people tend to vote for someone with a shared identity. But is that true? Are Asian Americans, for example, especially likely to vote for Harris because of their shared identity?
Asian Americans are a quickly growing political constituency that made a difference in 2020 in swing states such as Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, helping elect President Joe Biden. They are positioned to be influential again this November.
Taken as a whole, Asian Americans lean Democratic in 2024, with 62% favoring Harris, compared with 38% who support Trump. But for Harris, Asian Americans are not as strong a voting bloc as Black Americans, who poll at 77% supporting Harris, according to the Pew Research Center. Harris cannot take Asian Americans’ votes for granted.
Kamala Harris takes a photo with guests during a White House reception in May 2022 celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Associated Press
What guides identity politics and voting
Despite the assumption in Trump’s comments that voters gravitate toward a political candidate who shares parts of their identity, such as race or gender, that is not always the case.
Voters are more likely to vote for someone with a shared identity when they see a “linked fate.” with the candidate. So, people who have the same ethnicity or race may vote in a similar fashion because they expect to experience the effects of policy changes in the same way. Latinos could be more likely to vote for a Latino candidate because the candidate would prioritize issues that matter to them, such as immigration reform.
Politicians, for their part, can try to encourage people with whom they share an identity to believe in a linked fate to win their vote. In order to do this, candidates can play up issues that affect their identity group and then make the case that they are best equipped and more motivated to address those problems.
In order to earn voters’ support, candidates must also come across as likely to act in their supporters’ shared interests. This helps explain why people who care about so-called women’s issues, such as education or health care, are more likely to vote for a Democratic woman than a Republican woman. People generally think that Democrats represent women better than Republicans do – and they would not assume that a Republican female politician would champion women’s issues just because of her gender.
With this in mind, a candidate wanting to secure the vote of a group must first know what issues matter to them and then demonstrate that they understand the group well enough to earn their vote.
Asian Americans, like most Americans, list the economy, inflation, health care, crime, Social Security, the price of housing and immigration as their top issues in this election.
In order to effectively appeal to Asian American voters, Harris could demonstrate first that she identifies as Asian in order to invoke their shared identity. She could also show that she both understands the issues that Asian Americans care about and that she can be trusted to act in ways they favor on those issues.
To an extent, Harris has already worked to publicly identify with her South Asian heritage. She has referred to her mother’s immigrant background and has talked about her grandfather who lived in Chennai, in southern India. She has made references to her ethnic culture, such as when she mentioned coconut trees and cooked the traditional South Indian dish dosa in a video with fellow Indian American Mindy Kaling.
Once solidifying that they share an identity with a group of voters, political candidates must demonstrate that they understand how the group experiences the issues that matter to them. The concerns of Asian Americans arise out of specific experiences they have – such as immigration.
Asian Americans, for example, often complain about the long wait to sponsor family members abroad for visas to the U.S. At the same time, Asian Americans represent 15% of immigrants living in the U.S. without a visa.
Asian Americans are also concerned about the growing government backlog of visas and smugglers whom immigrants pay to help them illegally cross the border.
Harris often speaks about immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border, but not in personal terms – or about how this issue specifically relates to Asians.
While all U.S. residents are affected by inflation, small-business owners, in particular, feel the pinch. They must pay higher prices for goods but have limited capital with which to do so. They also must navigate higher interest rates.
Harris talks about the economy and inflation, as well as the need to support small-business owners, but not about how these issues specifically affect Asian Americans. Her only ad targeting Asian Americans has focused on hate crimes against them.
And Asian Americans, like most voters, strongly support Social Security and other federal programs that aim to ensure stability for the elderly. Harris could speak of how Social Security is the sole income source for over a quarter of Asian Americans – and for a third of African Americans – compared with 18% of white Americans.
Harris seems poised to capture the majority of the Asian American vote, which leans Democratic. But to what extent they vote for her – and with how much enthusiasm – will depend on Harris’ ability to connect with them as Asian Americans and the issues they care about.
Pawan Dhingra 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.
If history holds true to form, I expect the presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris to begin touting their support for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative as Election Day approaches.
The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, or GLRI, is a federal program that funds water and habitat protection and restoration for the Great Lakes, which contain over 20% of the world’s surface freshwater. While voters in some parts of the country may have never heard of it, it is a big deal in the eight states that border these inland seas.
A 2021 poll by the Great Lakes Water Quality Board found that 90% of U.S. and Canadian residents in the region support the lakes’ protection.
But the popularity of the Great Lakes would not have blossomed into such an ambitious and bipartisan conservation effort without another critical fact. Three of those eight surrounding states – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – are critical swing states in 2024. And Ohio, although no longer considered a swing state, had been one until 2016.
I have seen how politicians and conservationists deftly use the region’s political battleground status to draw support for Great Lakes restoration from presidential candidates from both major parties. And I believe this is unlikely to change in 2024 and beyond.
But in 2000, when the Florida Everglades ecosystem – which sits in what was a key swing state at the time – received over US$4 billion in federal funding for a massive cleanup, the Great Lakes still didn’t have the resources for even basic remediation of toxic sites.
This led many in the region to suffer from what I heard many lawmakers and others describe as “Everglades envy.” They shared maps of how the entire Everglades ecosystem could fit into one corner of the Great Lakes. More importantly, they plotted how to get funding to clean up toxic hot spots, restore degraded habitats, expand recreational access and educate the next generation of Great Lakes leaders.
George W. Bush’s executive order
When President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection team wanted to secure the electoral college votes of Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, regional lawmakers and advocates helped them craft an executive order. It declared the lakes a “national treasure” and required federal agencies to work together on a “regional collaboration of national significance for the Great Lakes.”
After Bush’s reelection, his executive order was used to organize over 1,500 diverse stakeholders into eight strategy teams. These teams created a $20 billion plan for restoring the Great Lakes.
However, the plan existed only on paper – until the presidential campaigns of 2008, when advocates and political leaders leveraged the swing state status of Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin to garner support for funding the cleanup plan.
After winning all eight Great Lakes states in 2008, Obama used stimulus funds to launch the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative in 2010.
With an initial congressional appropriation of $475 million in 2010, and nearly $300 million in each of the following two years, it was one of the rare times Obama’s proposed budget aligned with Republican priorities in Congress.
In the run-up to the 2012 presidential election, both Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee whose father was a former governor of Michigan, declared their support for Great Lakes restoration. This came after the Healing Our Waters coalition pressed both campaigns to pledge to fund GLRI and to stop invasive species from reaching the Great Lakes via the Chicago River.
When President Obama proposed cutting Great Lakes funding from $300 million to $250 million per year, Congress rebuffed him. Mark Wilson via Getty Images
After the 2012 election, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative continued to receive approximately $300 million per year and strong support in Congress. When Obama proposed modest cuts to the program during his second term, Republicans and Democrats united to restore the funding. The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative inspired “rare bipartisanship,” as The Associated Press reported at the time.
Trump moves to eliminate funding
In the 2016 election, representatives for both Trump and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, pledged support for Great Lakes restoration during the annual meeting of the Healing Our Waters coalition in Sandusky, Ohio. The Trump team, however, was ambiguous about the funding level it supported.
Congress, led by bipartisan members of the Great Lakes Congressional Task Force – including U.S. Rep. David Joyce and U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, Ohio Republicans who held powerful appropriations positions – fought back fiercely and restored the funding.
In 2018 and 2019, Trump’s budgets proposed cutting funding for the initiative by 90%. But again, with strong bipartisan support, it was restored to levels nearing $300 million per year.
By 2020, concerns tied to his reelection prospects changed Trump’s approach.
The famous turning point allegedly came during a car ride to a West Michigan campaign rally in 2019 when Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga emphasized the importance of the Great Lakes to Michigan politics.
He went further: “I support the Great Lakes. Always have. They’re beautiful. They’re big. Very deep. Record deepness, right? … We’re going to make the Great Lakes great again.”
In response, Michigan Democratic U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee quipped, “The President claiming to support the Great Lakes is like an arsonist congratulating themselves for putting out a fire they started.”
Regardless, Trump’s shift helped the restoration initiative reach $320 million in funding in the 2021 budget – the first time it topped $300 million since its first year.
On the campaign trail in 2020, both Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden highlighted their support for GLRI during swing state stops in the upper Midwest. Biden ultimately won all three of the current Great Lakes swing states and strongly supported the GLRI while in office too.
Since its launch in 2010, the GLRI has funded over 7,500 projects to clean up polluted waterways, restore habitats, control invasive species, reduce polluted runoff, improve recreational access and educate the public.
Great Lakes pollution remains a complex problem, however, and climate change further complicates cleanup efforts.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate on the Democratic ticket, briefly referenced the Great Lakes’ freshwater supply during the Oct. 1, 2024, vice presidential debate. He too has strongly supported efforts to restore them during his time in office.
Although Great Lakes restoration has not yet played a major public role in either Trump’s or Harris’ 2024 campaign, history tells us that the issue plays well politically in key swing states in the upper Midwest. In fact, it has become a rare bipartisan litmus test of allegiance to this politically divided and critically important region.
Mike Shriberg was previously the Great Lakes Regional Executive Director of the National Wildlife Federation, which entailed being a co-chair (and, for part of the time, Director) of the Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition that is referenced in the article.
Many of us have quit a job at some point in our lives – but how many have wondered if they had “just cause” to do so? Were you acting on a whim? Did your departure make life difficult for your employer? And did your desire to move on really outweigh the loss this meant for your boss?
Just cause can be a real problem for professional soccer players who want to change teams. Under the soccer transfer system created and operated by FIFA, the sport’s world governing body, players who quit without showing just cause – that is, who fail to show that their employer treated them in manner that is demonstrably unfair – can be subject to significant financial and disciplinary penalties.
But that could soon change. On Oct. 4, 2024, the European Court of Justice took a major step toward dismantling an employment system that placed undue burden on employees and, thankfully, was dispensed with for the rest of us long ago.
As a sports economist, I have written about this subject for several years now, and I know of no system outside of sports that restrains the rights of the employee to a comparable extent.
An object lesson for FIFA
The legal case is complicated, but the essence of it is that Lassana Diarra, a star player for Lokomotiv Moscow back in 2014, got into a dispute with the Russian club while under contract and quit. He then got a job offer from a Belgian club but was unable to take it because of the FIFA transfer regulations.
Under the governing body’s rules, not only was Diarra expected to pay damages to Lokomotiv amounting to US$11.5 million plus interest, but he was unable to take a job with any club until the dispute was settled. A formal suspension was not enforced, because Diarra had already been unable to work for 11 months.
But Diarra countersued, claiming the regulations of FIFA unreasonably restricted his employment rights. The case has passed through many stages, until the highest court in Europe finally delivered its decision.
The court struck down two specific parts of FIFA’s regulations: the rule that an International Transfer Certificate, required by a player to move from one country to another, cannot be issued until the dispute is settled; and the stipulation that any new employer of the player is jointly and severally liable for any damages against the player due to the old club, regardless of whether that employer played a role in the dispute.
The court, which has historically been deferential toward sports governing bodies and their regulations, was highly critical of FIFA’s transfer system. It declared the rules anti-competitive “by object” and not just “by effect.” In the view of the court, the rules were not merely aimed at ensuring an orderly market for soccer player services, but amounted to a “non-poaching agreement,” arguing that they were intended to restrain competition for players in order to benefit the clubs.
An end to transfer fees?
The decision means that FIFA will have to rewrite its transfer rules in a way that demonstrates that the system has a clear and legal purpose. The regulations will be deemed legitimate, the court said, for the purposes of guaranteeing “contractual stability” and ensuring that clubs have the right to receive compensation when there’s breach of contract.
A player who quits while under contract will still need to demonstrate just cause – unfair treatment by the club – or else be liable to pay a fine or penalty. But the new system will look very different, and it is hard to see how the payment of transfer fees can survive.
Last summer alone, clubs in the top five European leagues spent around $5 billion on player transfers. Frequently, there are moves between clubs in each direction, and so cash transfers are smaller than the big money moves that grab the headlines.
The system deprives some star players of substantial potential earnings.
While his salary doubled, Kane received only half of what Bayern was prepared to pay to obtain his services, thanks to the FIFA regulations. The rest went to his former club.
Here is what one might expect to happen from now on: Kane would unilaterally announce that he wanted to leave, and then a club like Bayern could make an offer. Tottenham would no longer have any enforceable claim over Bayern and so no transfer fee would be paid, and Bayern would offer to pay Kane something like $52 million a year.
Kane would have to pay damages to Tottenham for breach of contract, and the court suggested that these damages might reasonably equal the wages that the club would have paid him for the remainder of the contract – so in the case of Kane, $13 million.
Clearly Kane would have been much better off if the judgment had arrived a year or two ago.
Don’t fall for the trickle-down myth
Soccer fans will be worried that this means financial ruin for their club and increases inequality as the big clubs poach the big stars.
But I see no reason to think that the sky will fall. As recent research has shown, the transfer system has a negligible effect on the distribution of resources among the clubs. Rather, transfer fee spending is more likely the source of financial instability than its remedy, as some clubs spend extravagantly with unrealistic expectations.
It is true that club owners hoping to grow rich by developing young players and trading them in the market will believe that they now have fewer opportunities, but for most clubs, this has always been an illusion.
Big clubs tend to tie up the potential stars in their teens, leaving few opportunities for small clubs to find diamonds in the rough.
Major League Soccer, the U.S. professional league, for example, has ambitions to one day match the big European leagues and has committed significant resources to developing player talent.
But recent figures suggest that the league is still a net importer of players – and not just superstars such as Lionel Messi.
In fact, MLS might actually benefit from the end of the transfer system. There are plenty of talented players who might fancy a year or two in the U.S. if they are not unduly tied down by transfer regulations.
Blowing the whistle on unfair practices
But perhaps the biggest impact of the ruling will be on the mass of professional players who do not live in the spotlight.
FIFA estimates there are around 130,000 professional players worldwide, and most of them earn little in comparison to the super-salaried stars of the world’s biggest clubs.
Yet, these journeymen and -women players have been bound by the same restrictive system and are often denied the opportunity to change teams – not because they are being offered great riches, but because they want a change of scene, or to be closer to their families.
FIFPro, the players’ union, has documented numerous cases of onerous employment conditions, which were possible under the repressive transfer system.
Thanks to the European Court of Justice, those days may soon be over.
In 2015 I wrote a report for FIFPro on the economic consequences of the transfer system
Comprehensive sex and reproductive health education aims to promote positive attitudes toward sex and reproductive health, and empower young people to make informed decisions.
But decent sex and reproductive health education is still lacking in many parts of the world. This leaves significant gaps in young peoples’ knowledge and understanding.
We have carried out research to figure out what young people in England are missing in their sex education lessons. We reviewed the relationships and sex education (RSE) curricula across the UK.
We found that, in England, much of the focus of sex and reproductive health education is on pregnancy prevention. Much less emphasis is given to reproductive health topics such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, fertility and the menopause.
We also carried out a survey of 931 students aged 16-18 across England. We found students were missing key aspects of reproductive health knowledge.
Students are not being adequately informed about fertility, despite the RSE curriculum guidelines stating that students must be taught “the facts about reproductive health, including fertility, and the potential impact of lifestyle on fertility”.
Lack of knowledge
For example, despite the fact that students learn about the menstrual cycle in RSE lessons, half of them did not know when women are most fertile during the menstrual cycle.
Less than 3% of teenagers in our study told us that they had been taught about specific reproductive health conditions such as endometriosis and PCOS. Just over 10% said they had learned about menopause.
Over 70% of students recognised the decline in egg quality and quantity with age, but only about 50% understood the effects of age on sperm quality and quantity.
In our survey, we asked students what reproductive health topics they research about outside of school. Students told us that they had sought out knowledge on a variety of reproductive health topics, including PCOS, endometriosis, menopause, miscarriage and abortion – subjects that are seldom covered in detail during RSE lessons.
Many turned to social media and the internet for answers on sex and reproductive health. While these platforms offer easy access to information, they can also expose students to misinformation from non-credible sources.
In our survey, 70% of students said that they had “a little” sex education at their school. Only 30% rated their school’s sex education as good or very good. This shows a major gap in the quality of sex education most students are getting at school.
Knowledge seeking
Our study shows that students in England want to learn more about these topics in school. When we asked them what could be done to improve sex education at school, they called for a more inclusive and comprehensive curriculum that covers a wider variety of topics – including miscarriage, abortion, masturbation and how to access sexual and reproductive health services. One student said:
All we’ve done in school is go over and over having safe sex and talked about periods which whilst is important is barely scratching the surface of things people need to know about.
Students want greater focus on sex positivity because current discussions mostly highlight negative aspects of sexual activity. They believe the importance of sexual wellbeing is often ignored. They want honest, transparent, and non-judgmental education – not teaching methods driven by fear.
Based on our findings, our research team, as part of the non-profit International Reproductive Health Education Collaboration has developed evidence-based educational resources to enhance reproductive health education. These include an education resource for teachers, information leaflets and a fertility education poster.
These tools aim to help teachers, health professionals and the public access accurate and comprehensive reproductive health education.
Teens turn to other sources, such as social media, to get information they’re missing at school. Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock
Under the previous government, the Department of Education proposed an update to the RSE curriculum, which included the addition of topics such as “menstrual and gynaecological health, including endometriosis, PCOS, and heavy menstrual bleeding.”
The results of a consultation on this and other proposed changes are currently under analysis. But adding these topics to the curriculum would be a crucial advancement in school reproductive health education.
Reproductive health education must be given equal importance to core academic subjects, and schools need to actively engage with students, addressing their reproductive health needs and concerns. This is crucial, as school is often the only time that students receive formal education on these topics.
By providing comprehensive and accessible information at this stage, schools can equip students with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions about their reproductive health throughout their lives.
Rina Biswakarma is affiliated with the charity Fertility Network UK.
Daniel Marcu owns shares in Virilitas Labs and he is the President of the Network for Young Researchers in Andrology (non-profit).
Joyce Harper gives paid talks on reproductive health education and has written a book called Your Fertile Years.
Commuters in Scotland faced a shock at ticket machines as the Scottish government abandoned a pilot scheme that removed peak rail fares. During the pilot, tickets were the same price all day. But now that it has ended, the increase in fares is significant. The cost of commuting at peak time from Glasgow to Edinburgh, for example, has gone from £16.20 to £31.40.
The aim of the pilot, introduced in October 2023, was to encourage what’s known as a “modal shift” from cars to more sustainable transport.
Defending its decision, the Scottish government made two claims: that the pilot increased passenger numbers by only 6.8% (when an increase of 10% was required for it to be self-financing) and that it mostly benefited wealthier passengers.
These claims were widely reported, but are they correct? And what does this mean for similar schemes in other countries?
Passengers using the train to get to and from work benefited most from the pilot, which made travel cheaper at peak times (early morning until around 9am and evenings until around 7pm). It is true that wealthier people in the UK tend to use trains and cars more, while poorer people are more likely to travel by bus.
The graph below shows how much £100 of train and bus tickets, and £100 of petrol ten years ago would cost today.
Cost of transport in the UK (2014-2024)
The increase in train fares has been smoother, but mostly faster, than the increase in petrol prices. However, bus fares have increased faster than both. Scotland has not followed England in capping bus fares, a policy that might have benefited lower-income passengers more.
In theory, a decrease in price for a product will result in an increase in demand. But it is impossible to calculate exactly how much passenger numbers increased due to the pilot, because we cannot know for sure how many passengers would have travelled anyway (the “counterfactual”).
To estimate the rise in demand brought about by cheaper fares, we must make assumptions about the counterfactual, where peak fares remained in place. This is especially difficult for two reasons. First, the pilot began as passenger numbers were rising again after the COVID lockdowns.
Statisticians must make assumptions about how much demand would have continued to rise in this case. Depending on these assumptions, the estimated effect of the pilot on demand for rail travel ranges from an increase of 16% to a fall of 5%, compared with the final figure of 6.8%. A change in assumptions can change the estimated rise in demand substantially.
Second, the pilot spanned a period of disruption on the railways. Strikes in Scotland in 2022 may have put people off train travel, and again, we cannot know whether they would have returned in the counterfactual scenario.
And bad weather in Scotland in early 2024 and disruption caused by strikes in England and Wales make it difficult to use the rest of Great Britain as a control group to compare against Scotland.
To estimate the effects of a policy like the pilot, statisticians must make many other assumptions. For example, in April 2024 there was a big increase in fares across Scotland. The analysis underlying the report assumes that this would have happened even without the pilot.
All these assumptions (and more) lie beneath the reported 6.8% increase in demand and make it impossible to be confident that this was the true number of passengers who shifted to rail travel because peak fares were axed.
What’s happening elsewhere?
Similar schemes have been piloted in other countries, including a flat rate €49 (£40) per month (increased from €9) rail pass in Germany, a 50 cent (30 pence) flat fare across all public transport in Queensland, Australia, and a £2 flat bus fare in England.
As with the pilot in Scotland, it is difficult to determine whether these schemes have caused a modal shift. Some new evidence from Germany suggests that cheaper fares encouraged people to make more journeys overall, but that the shift from cars to trains was limited.
However, we know that the elasticity (how much demand changes as prices change) of public transport fares is greater in the long term than in the short term. There is a danger that, as in Scotland, governments will cancel them before the long-term effects are clear.
The SNP government in Scotland is facing difficulties balancing its budget. In these circumstances, any further subsidy to public transport seems unlikely. Instead, the government will have to find other ways to reach its net zero commitments.
There is evidence that people respond more strongly to an increase in price than to a decrease. If this is the case, the pilot itself could even cause a long-term decrease in passenger numbers in Scotland, because the fall in people using the trains due to the reintroduction of peak fares might be greater than the increase during the pilot.
It is impossible to tell yet, but in the long term this could make travelling on the railways more expensive for both passengers and for the government subsidising them.
Devolution is “a process, not an event”, according to the then-secretary of state for Wales, Ron Davies, in 1997. But it is unclear what may come next for Wales in that process under the new UK Labour government, despite the same party now being in charge in both London and Cardiff.
One ongoing debate among politicians and experts for several years has been whether Westminster should and will devolve more powers to Wales, including justice and policing.
It wasn’t until the passing of the Government of Wales Act 1998 that the then National Assembly was established. It allowed Wales to make decisions over issues such as education, housing and agriculture. Further primary law-making powers were subsequently granted to the now Senedd (Welsh parliament).
But Wales doesn’t have control over all matters and some are reserved for the UK parliament. A number of these are consistent across all UK nations, including fiscal policy, foreign affairs, nuclear policy and national security. But others are different for Wales when compared to Scotland and Northern Ireland.
One of the most obvious examples is in the area of justice and policing. Unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland, Wales is not a separate legal jurisdiction with its own system of law, policing and courts. While there are increasing areas of divergence between England and Wales, technically speaking, Wales is part of a single jurisdiction with England due to decisions made during Henry VIII’s reign in the 16th century.
The issue of devolving justice and policing has cropped up consistently over the past 25 years. It has been the subject of a variety of debates in the Senedd, Westminster and in the media. It has also been analysed by a number of official reports and independent or cross-party commissions.
In 2011, the Silk commission was established by the UK government to explore the issue. In its 2014 report, it recommended devolving policing and youth justice to Wales by 2017. That never happened.
The Thomas commission, set up by the Welsh government in 2019, also recommended devolving justice to Wales, including youth justice and policing. Earlier this year, the independent commission on the constitutional future of Wales called on the UK government to agree to the devolution of responsibility for justice and policing to the Senedd and Welsh government.
In 2023, Keir Starmer said that a Labour government would introduce a “take back control bill”, to devolve new powers to communities from Westminster. Those intentions were echoed in Labour’s election manifesto ahead of July’s general election.
But the issue of devolving justice to Wales was absent from Labour’s manifesto. And in an interview in June, the now-secretary of state for Wales Jo Stevens described such a move as “fiddling around with structures and systems”. It is therefore unclear whether devolution to regions of England will take place in parallel to further devolution to Wales and the other nations.
And while this issue may not be at the forefront of UK Labour policy, it is an ongoing commitment of Welsh Labour. The latter commissioned even further research in August into the devolution of justice.
What are some of the potential challenges?
One significant issue is the age of criminal responsibility, currently set at ten in England and Wales. The Thomas commission recommended raising this to 12, aligning Wales with Scotland and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
But this raises logistical questions. For example, what would happen when a case crosses borders or involves children just above or below the age threshold? These practical challenges need to be addressed if justice is to be devolved smoothly.
The Thomas Commission also laid out detailed proposals for reforms to youth justice, prisons and probation services. The Welsh youth courts have already started implementing a more preventive and restorative approach, but a jurisdictional overlap with England has slowed progress. While children’s services are devolved, youth justice remains under UK government control.
Issues like transport to courts, funding and jurisdictional boundaries need careful consideration too. For example, how would authorities determine whether a crime committed near the Wales-England border falls under Welsh or English law?
Of course, this is an issue which already exists between England and Scotland, and there are complex rules in place. Dependent upon the nature and circumstances of the crime, “jurisdiction” is typically dependent on where it was first initiated. In turn, further challenges arise surrounding police force cooperation, as well as mechanisms for sharing different types of evidence. There are also legally-protected agreements regarding powers to arrest people in each other’s territories.
Ironing out these types of issues is particularly important in respect of female offenders, as Wales has made progress in providing better support for them.
Disparities in legal expertise may also become more of a challenge. Legal experts have noted that as Welsh laws become more distinct, judges in England may lack the relevant expertise to handle Welsh cases. This concern has already arisen in Welsh tribunals, where appeals are sometimes directed to England’s Upper Tribunal, raising doubts about how well English judges can handle increasingly Wales-specific laws.
Cooperation
While these issues are very real, they shouldn’t block progress. With cooperation between Cardiff and Westminster, the devolution of justice could happen without major disruption. Instead of having endless debates and reviews, time and resources could be better spent acting on existing expert recommendations.
For instance, both governments could agree on a ten-year timeline – as recommended by the independent commission – to devolve justice, starting with policing. It’s an area which already has strong ties to devolved services at the local level. Youth justice and probation could then follow.
Despite the potential challenges, the new Labour UK government has a chance to bring about meaningful change. Devolving justice may take time, but it could bring Wales closer to achieving the legal autonomy many believe it deserves.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Governments and public relations firms are under pressure to, in UN secretary-general António Guterres’s words, stop “fuelling the madness” and ban fossil fuel advertising or cut ties with the industry.
France, Amsterdam, Sheffield and Edinburgh have all restricted fossil fuel advertising to differing degrees in recognition of the industry’s responsibility for climate breakdown.
People working in the advertising industry are among those calling for an end to working with fossil fuel companies. There is a reputational risk with continuing to represent these businesses. Four advertising agencies recently lost a sustainability certification for taking an oil company as a client.
Oil and gas advertising is perhaps most prolific in sport. A recent report estimated that fossil fuel companies have invested more than £4 billion across 200 sponsorship deals.
Fellow researchers have appealed for sport to be included in any further advertising bans. There is a precedent: a tobacco advertising ban came into force in the UK in 2002. Bear in mind, that ban took nearly 40 years of campaigning and tobacco executives have shown they’re capable of navigating its loopholes.
Even so, the fossil fuel industry will prove significantly harder to purge than tobacco. Here’s why.
‘No fossil fuels, no sport’
Human development is largely a story of increasing energy use. Oil in particular has transformed everyday life beyond comprehension.
Analysis of one oil company’s sustainability reports identified how its communications strategy shifted from denying the results of climate science to more subtle efforts to delay an energy transition. These included the argument that fossil fuels are an irreplaceable precondition for “the good life”.
Sport is a vehicle for perpetuating this argument. In 2021, an oil and gas trade association in the US launched a campaign showcasing sports products made from petroleum, the implication being that people cannot enjoy sport without fossil fuels.
Sport is poised for corporate piggybacking because it evokes connection, pride and security in fans and spectators – feelings the fossil fuel industry is keen to capitalise on. An analysis of the Canadian oil industry’s advertising between 2006 and 2015 documented a shift from images of the natural environment to those depicting family life and domesticity.
This kind of pernicious messaging, which entrenches fossil fuels within the things people hold dear, will be hard for legislators to reverse.
Oil change
Imre Szeman, a professor of human geography who specialises in the energy transition, urges us to comprehend just how deep our relationship with oil runs.
Addressing climate change is not simply a technical matter, but a cultural one as well. An issue of how we grasp what is so often taken for granted in everyday life.
Change will not only require acknowledging the severity of the environmental crisis, but to recognise how its primary causes have shaped society, including in elite sport. It’s crucial to understand modern societies as oil societies if we are ever to envisage one no longer dependent on it.
Sport sponsorships reflect the infiltration of fossil fuels in modern society. Trong Nguyen/Shutterstock
So, considering sport, the first step is to remove the cognitive dissonance that surrounds modern elite sporting culture, the nature of its oil dependency and the consequences of climate change.
Sporting organisations can start by saying no to fossil fuel sponsorship. There are examples of this happening already in tennis, rugby and the Olympics, with Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo indicating an oil company was not welcome as a sponsor of the 2024 Games.
Change happens by disaster or by design. It’s time to recognise the decades long influence wielded by the fossil fuel industry.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Theo Lorenzo Frixou 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.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jeremy Allouche, Professor in Development Studies, Institute of Development Studies
Flags indicate how many trees each donor country has planted. Jeremy Allouche, CC BY-ND
In the rural village of Téssékéré, the increasing number and intensity of droughts linked to climate change is making the lives and livelihoods of the local Fulani communities increasingly vulnerable. Here, in the northern Sahel desert region of Senegal (known as the Ferlo), the pastoral population walks over dry, dusty ground with their livestock in search of grazing areas and working borehole water pumps. In favourable years, these farmers can stay in the fields around their local borehole, but climate change is forcing them to move further afield to find pasture to feed their cattle.
In the small Ivory Coast town of Kani, a farmer is concerned about the increase in plantation areas to the detriment of forests, which no longer provide shade. The scarcity and fluctuation of rainfall is altering the sowing periods for rice, maize and yams, and the intermittent nature of the rains is leading to a drop in production quality.
These issues of gradual desertification – where more of the land slowly becomes desert – affects both nature and people. As soil degrades, people migrate to different areas and it can be harder for them to access health services and education while undermining subsistence and production economies, therefore increasing poverty.
As a response, the African Union set up an ambitious continent-wide megaproject in 2007 to address these social-ecological issues and combat poverty. The Great Green Wall initiative is a tree planting restoration project that stretches from Senegal to Djibouti, 5,000 miles (8,000km) across Africa’s Sahel region.
In Téssékéré, bare, scattered plots of fenced-off land covered in cracked soil is now being used to test out techniques for growing seedlings and protect it from further damage by grazing cattle. Winter crops such as peanuts or black-eyed peas are being grown based on an agroecological model, a sustainable farming strategy considering ecological processes.
But large-scale projects like this often don’t consider the needs of local people or places. Our new research shows that the Great Green Wall won’t work effectively unless it considers more localised contexts.
At the other end of the continent, the Green Legacy Initiative, a project launched by the Ethiopian government, claims to have planted 566 million trees in one day. In Ivory Coast, which lies outside the original route, local and state authorities see the project as a means of stabilising the ecosystem. However, local populations are concerned that it will be implemented in an ad hoc, unstable and unsustainable manner. In short, the project gives rise to a diversity of opinions and, above all, a multitude of implementation strategies.
With investment of US$19 billion (£14.82 billion), more action, such as land restoration and investment in farming, can be rolled out across Africa, so the focus is now on large-scale change rather than localised projects. The Great Green Wall has become an umbrella term, a brand encompassing many development projects managed by different international and intergovernmental organisations. This is at odds with our research findings confirming that the ambitious aims of the project aren’t being implemented locally in an effective manner.
This “takeover” of the project by developed countries prompts us to question what the project has now become and its ability to meet its original purpose.
Set to fail?
The Great Green Wall will fail unless it returns to its original aim of being a pan-African project made up of a multitude of aspirations, imaginations and local social-ecological contexts. Project funding alone is not enough to ensure the success of the project – it needs local appropriation. Success should not be measured solely in terms of how many trees are being planted, but on whether local people see a positive difference from the project in their areas and on their lives.
From Senegal to Ethiopia, our research shows that the Great Green Wall implies a diversity of world views. The project is therefore implemented specifically in each region, in each country, to form a project mosaic. The initiative loses its substance and its capacity for local appropriation when homogenised and globalised to fit into external political agendas.
An agroecological initiative like this one only works when it involves the people living on the ground. More than simply an eco-project, it is a diverse, pan-African and locally embedded social-ecological initiative with scope to make substantial change at scale if executed well.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Today, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Birds Canada released The State of Canada’s Birds 2024 report. Findings indicate that while many of Canada’s bird populations continue to decline, others have increased due to deliberate and informed conservation efforts.
October 8, 2024 – Gatineau, Quebec
Birds are the most accessible and effective indicators of the health of the air, water, and land. When bird populations and their habitats are thriving, we know that people also benefit.
Today, Environment and Climate Change Canada and Birds Canada released The State of Canada’s Birds 2024 report. Findings indicate that while many of Canada’s bird populations continue to decline, others have increased due to deliberate and informed conservation efforts. Specifically, the report shows how 463 bird species that regularly occur in Canada have changed since 1970. For each species, the report includes population status, distribution, trends, goals, threats, and conservation actions to protect them.
For the first time, the report includes long-term population goals for all native bird species found in Canada that have sufficient data. These goals will help measure progress in maintaining and restoring bird species across the country, and in halting and reversing biodiversity loss.
The State of Canada’s Birds 2024 report is a key tool for Canada to report on Target 21 of the Kunming–Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework, which aims to ensure that the best available biodiversity data, information, and knowledge are accessible to decision-makers, practitioners, and the public. In a few weeks, Canada and thousands of delegates from around the world will be gathered to take action on protecting nature during the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) at the 2024 United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, which will be held in Columbia from October 21 to November 1, 2024.
Quotes
“Birds are at the heart of Canada’s biodiversity. Open-access data supports scientific decision-making and leads to a deeper understanding of our environment. Where deliberate conservation action has been taken, birds have recovered. Together with communities, citizen scientists, and organizations such as Birds Canada, we are working to build a nature-positive future. Canada is committed to halting and reversing nature loss by 2030 and achieving full recovery for nature by 2050.” – The Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change
“Through birds, we find beauty and solace in the natural world. Birds are also an important indicator of the health of our planet. And what they are telling us is that humans are having an impact on bird populations. Both positively, through the conservation of wetlands and the resulting impact on wetland birds, but also negatively, through the drastic decline of grassland birds from habitat loss. For our imperiled grassland birds, the time to act is now.” – Patrick Nadeau, President and Chief Executive Officer, Birds Canada
Quick facts
The State of Canada’s Birds 2024 report is hosted on the NatureCounts website by Birds Canada. This user-friendly, authoritative, and dynamic platform is frequently updated to incorporate the best available data, offering detailed overviews of each bird species regularly occurring in Canada. NatureCounts is one of the world’s largest biodiversity databases and helps inform many conservation efforts in Canada.
The report focuses on 10 groups of birds: waterfowl, birds of prey, wetland birds, marine birds, forest birds, Arctic birds, long-distance migrants, shorebirds, aerial insectivores, and grassland birds.
The main threats to birds include habitat loss, climate change, outdoor cats, window collisions, and pollution.
Overall results of the report indicate that 36 percent of species has decreased in population, while 31 percent of Canada’s bird species has increased since 1970, with some of strongest recoveries seen in waterfowl, birds of prey, and wetland birds. The data shows us that when deliberate and informed action for conservation is taken, declines in bird populations can be halted and reversed.
This is the third comprehensive assessment of the population status of all bird species that occur in Canada. Previous reports were published in 2019 and 2012, and since then, data has been added and the methods for analysis and assessment have improved. Two new groups have also been analyzed for the first time: long-distance migrants and Arctic birds.
Related products
Associated links
Contacts
Hermine Landry Press Secretary Office of the Minister of Environment and Climate Change 873-455-3714 Hermine.Landry@ec.gc.ca
Media Relations Environment and Climate Change Canada 819-938-3338 or 1-844-836-7799 (toll-free) media@ec.gc.ca
Jody Allair Director of Communications Birds Canada 519-586-3531 ext. 197 jallair@birdscanada.org
Senior councillors are being asked to approve proposed changes to the way Leeds City Council provides transport assistance for post-16 learners with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), as the level of discretionary support currently provided is not sustainable.
The proposed changes would still offer a level of discretionary transport assistance for Post-16 learners with SEND and help support independence through travel training, whilst addressing the significant financial challenge.
The council is statutorily obliged to make free-of-charge home to school travel arrangements for school-age children with SEND. There is no such requirement to provide this for post-16 learners, however the council has been doing so on a discretionary basis at a cost of around £4m-£4.5million each year.
Following a consultation earlier this year, a report to the council’s Executive Board will propose the following changes:
Limiting post-16 transport assistance to learners with SEND, living three or more miles from their education setting.
Independent Travel Training and a free bus pass (or equivalent cost) for a young person who is able to travel independently or could make the journey to their learning setting on public transport accompanied by an adult as necessary.
A yearly flat-rate Personal Transport Allowance for post-16 learners with SEND, allowing learners and their families to make their own travel arrangements, and based on distance between their home and learning setting:
– Between 3 and 10 miles – £1,000 per year.
– Between 10.01 and 20 miles – £2,000 per year.
– Over 20.01 miles – £3,000 per year.
Providing council-organised transport for those meeting the exceptional circumstances criteria.
Introducing these proposals would achieve an estimated financial saving to the council of more than £800,000 during the financial year 2025/26.
Should the proposals be approved by the council’s Executive Board next Wednesday (16th October), the changes would be introduced for young people starting post-16 education in September 2025 and onwards. All young people already in post-16 education receiving transport assistance would continue on the current policy unless there is a change in their circumstances such as moving house or a different education setting.
Councillor Helen Hayden, Leeds City Council’s executive member for children and families, said:
“We absolutely recognise and understand the concerns of young people, their families and carers, in how these changes may affect them, and we have fully considered their feedback from the consultation when finalising these proposals.
“Given the significant financial challenges the council faces and the increasing level of demand, the level of discretionary transport support we currently provide is not sustainable.
“However, we remain committed to providing support for young people and their families through a personal transport allowance, through provision of our award winning independent travel training, and by ensuring that those with exceptional circumstances requiring council organised transport, continue to receive it.”
Public consultation on the proposals was held between 24 June and 23 July 2024, with just over 300 responses received and views sought from children and young people, parents and carers, staff and governors of Special Inclusion Learning Centres (SILCs), primary and secondary schools, and post-16 providers, and wider stakeholders.
Should the proposals be approved at Executive Board, the council will begin contacting families and key services to ensure they are aware of the changes well in advance of their introduction from September 2025. Officers intend to work with parent forums, young people and families to continue to inform their understanding of how the proposals impact those affected before and during the proposals’ implementation, and will also liaise with key partners such as public transport providers to continually increase their awareness of accessibility needs of young people with SEND.
Proposals to remove transport assistance eligibility for post-19 learners, and to introduce a contributory charge for post-16 learners towards their transport, have not been recommended to Executive Board for implementation following feedback from the consultation.
THOUSANDS of runners will be taking to the city’s streets this weekend for the annual Run Leicester half marathon and 10k race.
The events will take place on Sunday 13 October, starting and finishing at Leicester’s Victoria Park.
Runners will set out from the park from 9.15am, on a route through the city centre onto Melton Road, and into Thurmaston and Birstall, before returning to the starting point.
A series of rolling road closures and parking restrictions will be in place along the route to enable the runners to pass safely.
The route heads across the city including London Road, St George’s Way, Charles Street, Belgrave Gate and Melton Road, and then out towards Thurmaston, Watermead Country Park and Birstall, before the race returns via Red Hill Circle, Loughborough Road and then the canal side path.
From there the route will heads through Abbey Park and the city centre, before continuing up New Walk via De Montfort Street and University Road on its way to the finish at Victoria Park.
The 10k race will follow the same route as far as Melton Road, before travelling along Loughborough Road, Holden Street and Ross Walk to re-join the riverside path, past the Space Centre and Abbey Park on its way back to the city.
Parking and loading restrictions will be in place to keep the route free of traffic, and temporary road closures will be in place while the race passes through. The measures have been clearly signposted along the route in advance.
Roads are expected to have reopened fully by 1pm.
The race is a hugely popular event, attracting runners ranging from enthusiastic amateurs to club athletes, all raising money for a range of charities including official charity partner, LOROS Hospice.
The events are organised by Run Leicester and full details of the route and road closures are available at http://www.runleicester.co.uk
Race director, Andrew Ward, said: “This year’s Run Leicester half marathon and 10k is set to be our best event ever, with over 4,000 runners expected to take to the streets on Sunday. It’s by far the biggest running event in the county and serves as inspiration to everyone watching as they cheer the runners on towards the finish line.
“We would encourage everyone to come out and support what is such a fantastic event for the whole city. It’s a real festival atmosphere with singers and drummers all around the route for both runners and spectators to enjoy.
“We can’t wait to see everyone on race day; the atmosphere will be incredible and the event will ultimately raise thousands of pounds for LOROS Hospice and other local charities.”
Bus services from the city centre will be running as normal but some will be diverted to alternative bus stops nearby while the race is in progress, with any changes clearly signposted.
Traffic and travel updates are also available from Leicester Area Traffic Control on X at @ATCLeicester
Manchester has launched an initiative to become the UK’s first Carbon Literate City as part of the drive to become zero carbon by 2038.
The effort, co-ordinated by Manchester City Council working with The Carbon Literacy Project, aims to achieve the status by getting the equivalent of 15% of the city’s population – 85,349 people – trained and certified as Carbon Literate.
Carbon Literacy® is defined as “an awareness of the carbon costs and impacts of everyday activities, and the ability and motivation to reduce emissions, on an individual, community and organisational basis.” It describes an awareness of climate change and the impacts which our everyday actions, whether as individuals or organisations, have. Being Carbon Literate enables people to take informed decisions, whether in their personal or work lives. Becoming a Carbon Literate City will help in the collective effort to dramatically cut harmful carbon emissions across Manchester.
Manchester City Council is already committed to Carbon Literacy and is the first local authority to achieve The Carbon Literacy Project’s Silver organisational designation and is working towards Gold status. By December this year the Council aims to have 50% of its staff, around 3,500 people, trained and certified in Carbon Literacy. Other founding partners of the Manchester initiative include Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester Museum, Auto Trader, Manchester Digital and GMAST (a network of arts and cultural organisations working to contribute to the city’s climate ambitions.)
Councillor Tracey Rawlins, Executive Member for Environment, said: “Earning recognition as the country’s first Carbon Literate City is going to require a step change in the number of organisations getting on board and spreading the word in their own sectors.“This has never been a city to shy away from challenges and we hope that this title will become the latest in a long line of Manchester firsts.
“What really matters here is not the title itself but what it will mean in terms of the number of individuals and organisations who are aware of the issues and the positive actions they can take to help address them.
“The city can only reach its zero carbon goals through collective local, regional and national effort. Having a more informed and engaged population is an important step.”
Dave Coleman, Co-founder and Managing Director of The Carbon Literacy Project, said: “Given our origins and our deep roots in the city, it comes as no surprise that it is Manchester that has stepped up, built on all its existing hard work, and publicly declared it’s ambition to be the very first certified Carbon Literate Locality. “Globally more than 100,000 citizens are already certified as being Carbon Literate, but of these, more than 10,000 live, work and study in Manchester.
“The Manchester Carbon Literate City initiative brings together people and organisations already acting on climate in the city, to further help and support each other, and bring others along with them. Working together in this way makes our collective action on climate easier, faster and cheaper, and in Manchester at least, demonstrates that truly “the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts”.
More information about the Manchester Carbon Literate City initiative is available at carbonliteracy.com/mclc and about Carbon Literacy itself at carbonliteracy.com. The latest public Carbon Literacy courses are available at the Project’s events page.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
There are two weeks to the deadline for the first stage of the procurement process for the 2025 crime contract.
If you want your contract to commence on Wednesday 1 October 2025 and to join duty schemes from that day, you must submit your tender by Tuesday 22 October 2024.
If you submit your tender after this date but before Wednesday 30 April 2025, your contract will start on Wednesday 1 October 2025. However, you will be unable to join a duty rota until January 2026.
Tenders received from Thursday 1 May 2025 to Monday 30June 2025 will be opened in early July 2025 and any tenders received from Tuesday 1 July 2025 onwards will be opened the month following submission.
How do I tender?
Tenders must be submitted using the LAA’s eTendering system.
Source: United Kingdom – Executive Government & Departments
A man has been ordered to clear illegally dumped waste from a site near Saltburn in a prosecution brought by the Environment Agency.
Images shows dumped waste on the site.
Martin Booker, 60, of Woodside in Brotton, operated an illegal waste site on unregistered land, burnt it and ignored warnings from the Environment Agency to stop.
He appeared at Teesside Magistrates’ Court last month for sentencing and having previously denied the allegations, changed his plea to guilty to three offences of operating a waste site without an environmental permit.
The court heard the land, which is at the end of Gladstone Street in Brotton, is next to council-owned allotments and does not have an environmental permit or a registered exemption, which are required by law to manage waste operations.
Booker was fined £648 and will pay a victim surcharge of £259. A remediation order was made against Brooker for him to clear the site of all waste. If he fails to comply he could be subject to further action.
Booker ‘largely ignored’ warnings
Gary Wallace, Area Environment Manager for the Environment Agency, said:
Environmental permits are in place to protect the public and environment and we told Booker a number of times that he must stop his activities and clear the waste from the site.
He largely ignored these warnings, showing a disregard for law.
Illegal activity such as this undermines legitimate businesses that work hard to operate within the regulations, as well as putting the environment at risk and impacting on the local community.
In February 2022 an Environment Agency officer visited the land and saw waste including scrap electricals such as fridges and washing machines, as well as shopping trollies and scrap vehicle parts. There were clear signs of burning.
Enquiries led the officers to Booker, and a letter was sent instructing him to cease all activity and clear the site.
By May 2022 most of the waste had been cleared, but Boooker resumed waste activity on the land. By October the same year waste was again strewn across the site and the pathway access to the allotments – including a pram, a three piece suite and a TV.
In January 2023 the Environment Agency gave Booker one month to clear the site, but a month later it was still full of waste – again with evidence of burning.
When he was interviewed in May 2023 Booker said he’d owned two garages on the land that he knocked down.
He said he’d brought rubble to the land to develop it, but that people fly tipped the plot and he cleared it by putting it into residents’ bins or throwing it in the allotments.
He denied being responsible for disposing and burning waste. He also claimed not to have a vehicle but evidence from the council confirmed he was seen in a scrap van in Saltburn in October 2023.
A final visit on 19 March 2024 saw the site still had waste present, with evidence of burning.
Law is there to protect communities
Cllr Adam Brook, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods and Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council, said:
Our officers work closely with colleagues in the Environment Agency and other partner agencies every day to protect the public.
The decision to go to court is never taken lightly. However, if the law which is clearly there to protect our residents, visitors, businesses and the environment we all share is disregarded in this way this action must be taken and I fully support the EA.
I would like to thank the Environment Agency and everyone else involved for their hard work on this case.
Illegal waste activity can be reported to the Environment Agency on 0800 807060.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Congressman Greg Casar (D-Texas)
WASHINGTON– Today, Congressman Greg Casar (D-Texas) and 46 other Members of Congress are calling on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban the use of an herbicide, Paraquat, in the U.S. to protect public health. Paraquat is already banned in over 70 countries.
The Members of Congressreleased a letter todayurging EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan to protect farm workers, rural Americans, and the environment from the harmful effects of Paraquat and ban the use of the herbicide in the U.S. Exposure to the herbicide is linked to life threatening diseases like Parkinson’s disease and thyroid cancer, and linked to an increase in soil and water pollution.
“Paraquat is a toxic substance linked to life threatening diseases and grave impacts on the environment — it has been banned in dozens of countries and should be banned in the United States,” the members wrote. “We urge the EPA to change course and deliver critical protections for farmworkers, agricultural communities, and the environment by banning Paraquat.”
The EPA has already banned Paraquat for areas such as golf courses and recreational areas. If Paraquat is too dangerous for golfers, it is too dangerous for farm workers and rural Americans. Nearly 70 countries have banned or discontinued the use of Paraquat, including China, Brazil, the European Union, and Canada.
Theletteris led by U.S. Representative Greg Casar (TX-35), and signed by U.S. RepresentativesAlma Adams (NC-12), Nanette Barragán (CA-44), Earl Blumenauer (OR-03), Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Cori Bush (MO-01), Joaquin Castro (TX-20), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (FL-20), Judy Chu (CA-28), Yvette Clarke (NY-09), Steve Cohen (TN-09), Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), Dwight Evans (PA-03), Jesús G. “Chuy” García (IL-04), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Al Green (TX-09), Raúl Grijalva (AZ-07), Sara Jacobs (CA-51), Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Henry C. “Hank” Johnson (GA-04), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Barbara Lee (CA-12), James P. McGovern (MA-02), Jerrold Nadler (NY-12), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC), Chellie Pingree (ME-01), Katie Porter (CA-47), Mike Quigley (IL-05), Delia Ramirez (IL-03), Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Deborah Ross (NC-02), Raul Ruiz (CA-25), C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02), Linda T. Sánchez (CA-38), Jan Schakowsky (IL-09), Mark Takano (CA-39), Shri Thanedar (MI-13), Bennie Thompson (MS-02), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Paul Tonko (NY-20), Nydia Velázquez (NY-07), Maxine Waters (CA-43), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Jennifer Wexton (VA-10), and Frederica S. Wilson (FL-24).
It is endorsed by the Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, American Sustainable Business Network, Beyond Pesticides, the Brian Grant Foundation, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, the Davis Phinney Foundation, Earthjustice, Ecological Landscape Alliance, Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, Green New Deal Network, HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance, GreenLatinos, Laborers’ Health & Safety Fund of North America, Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA!), League of Conservation Voters, the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Parkinson Association of Alabama, Parkinson Association of Northern California, PD Avengers (Global Alliance to End Parkinson’s Disease Assn.), Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network (PAN), Pesticide Action Network, Power for Parkinson’s, Power Over Parkinson’s, the Rachel Carson Council, Re:wild Your Campus, Rural Coalition, United Farm Workers (UFW), and the United Farm Workers Foundation (UFWF).
“The people who feed us should not face twice the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease,” said Geoff Horsfield, policy director for the Environmental Working Group (EWG). “President Biden’s EPA should put the people who feed us ahead of the profits of a pesticide company that hid the risks of paraquat for decades. Seventy countries have banned paraquat, so we know that farmers have plenty of safer options. We are grateful to Rep. Casar for his leadership in protecting farmers and farmworkers.”
“More than 1 million people in the U.S. live with Parkinson’s disease, the second most common and fastest growing neurodegenerative disease in the world,” said Ted Thompson, senior vice president of public policy at The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. “With only about 30 percent of Parkinson’s risk explained by genetics, we know that other factors — including environmental risks like exposure to toxic chemicals — can play a role in the development of the disease. We appreciate Representative Casar’s efforts to ensure that the Environmental Protection Agency is doing all it can to protect Americans from the harms associated with exposure to these toxins.”
“Every day across America, farm workers, as well as their families and communities, are exposed to Paraquat – a dangerous chemical known to cause severe health impacts,” said Teresa Romero, president of UFW. “We commend Congressman Casar for fighting to ensure that every worker is safe on the job and we call on the EPA to listen to the concerns of the people who put food on all of our tables.”
“The UFW Foundation supports the banning of Paraquat, a chemical whose exposure puts the lives of hundreds of thousands of farm workers at risk,” said Erica Lomeli, interim chief executive officer of the UFW Foundation. “Farm workers deserve a safe environment free from harmful substances that can impact not only their health but also the well-being of their families. Not only is Paraquat dangerous for farm workers, but it also poses significant risks to consumers who may ingest produce treated with this pesticide.”
“We thank Rep. Casar and his colleagues for their leadership in urging the EPA to finally remove this dangerous chemical from the market,” said Lorette Picciano, executive director of the Rural Coalition. “We have heard from far too many farmers, ranchers and workers in communities we serve who have developed Parkinsons and other diseases. The devastating cost to their lives and health, families and communities far outweigh any possible benefit of Paraquat’s continued use.”
Thefull letter can be viewed here.
Learn more atbanparaquat.org
###
Congressman Greg Casar represents Texas’s 35th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which runs down I-35 from East Austin to Hays County to the West Side of San Antonio. A labor organizer and son of Mexican immigrants, Casar serves as the Whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for the 118th Congress. He also serves on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Committee on Agriculture.
Coast Guard Rear Admiral Doug Schofield, District Commander of District 7, the Coast Guard’s Southeast, speaks about the Coast Guard’s efforts to recover from Hurricane Helene while still serving the people of Florida.
Links for more information on hurricane preparedness and the Coast Guard’s response.
Video by Petty Officer 2nd Class Jose Hernandez and Petty Officer 2nd Class Ian Gray.
Important Safety Reminder
During a hurricane or emergency, it’s critical to use the proper channels to report distress—NOT social media. To reach the U.S. Coast Guard, use VHF radio channel 16 or dial 911. Our social media accounts are not monitored 24/7, and tagged posts or private messages may not be seen right away, causing delays in lifesaving rescue efforts.
Meeting COP28 goals requires a substantial increase in clean energy investment by 2030, including in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). Amid domestic financial constraints, foreign direct investment (FDI) could play a key role in EMDEs’ ability to close their renewable energy investment gap and finance green projects, more broadly. This Note finds that strengthening climate policies boosts FDI into renewable energy in EMDEs, especially in those with solar power potential, while less clear effects are found for FDI into EVs and green hydrogen possibly due to their recent emergence. Closing the average climate policy gap with respect to AEs could secure 40 percent of the private finance needed for renewable energy investment in EMDEs, helping overcome the impact of high financing costs. Strengthening the macro-structural framework, such as through improving trade and capital account openness and institutional quality, would also raise green FDI inflows, complementing climate policies. Case studies show that countries that attracted FDI into renewable energy put in place a large and diverse set of policies in the electricity sector, including those that secure a revenue stream for investors in the initial phases, such as power-purchase agreements/feed-in tariffs, renewables targets, and complementary investments. Countries that successfully attracted FDI into EVs relied on the development of national sectoral strategies including production and adoption subsidies, prior comparative advantage in the sector, and bilateral alliances with key players in the EV market. Finally, comprehensive national hydrogen strategies that leverage international efforts to boost production, and good conditions for production of renewable energy, were key drivers of green hydrogen FDI. Global initiatives such as the Just Energy Transition Partnerships and the EU strategy for green hydrogen are benefitting FDI to EMDEs.
MAPLE GROVE, Minn., Oct. 08, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — TopLine Financial Credit Union, a Twin Cities-based member-owned financial services cooperative, was honored with three marketing awards from the Marketing Association of Credit Unions. The Marketing Association of Credit Unions (MAC) Awards honored TopLine in three categories: Community Engagement, Financial Education and Brand/Rebrand Evolution.
In the Community Engagement category, TopLine won bronze for their Winter Spirit Week Penny Wars competition. The goal of Penny Wars was to introduce a fun new competition for employees that included a charitable component to benefit one of TopLine’s selected non-profit partners. Teams tried to earn as many points as possible with pennies worth one point, $1 bill worth 100 points, $5 bill worth 500 points, etc. Teams could sabotage other teams by dropping silver coins in opponents’ jars to deduct points. TopLine raised a total of $1,940 in just one week. The winning team got to select their TopLine non-profit charity of choice, and all donations were given to Avenues of Youth, who provides emergency shelter, short-term housing and supportive services for homeless youth in a safe and nurturing environment.
TopLine took home silver in the Financial Education category for their financial education session with the Energy Careers Academy – the first ever graduating class of the program. The goal of the session was to equip adults with a better understanding of personal finance basics and develop healthy financial habits, such as establishing a financial services relationship, developing a budget, establish routine savings for emergencies and for retirement, using credit wisely, paying down debt, achieving other goals such as buying their first car, their first home, and the importance of planning for their future.
In the Rebrand/Brand Evolution category, TopLine took home the bronze award for their new Bloomington Branch. The new branch was designed as a flagship branch, to pay tribute to TopLine’s heritage of telephone workers who founded the credit union in 1935 when seven employees of the Bell System pooled $35 to create Minneapolis Telco Credit Union. The roof line and drive up replicates the “T”, depicting a telephone pole and line. With the opening of the new branch, TopLine also developed a new tagline for their next era, “Connected, We All Do Better,” that pays homage to the credit union’s legacy, and supports the credit union mission of connecting with members, employees and communities to build life-long relationships.
“We are incredibly honored and humbled to be recognized with three prestigious marketing awards by the Marketing Association of Credit Unions for our community engagement, financial education and branding efforts,” said Vicki Roscoe Erickson, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, TopLine Financial Credit Union. “This achievement reflects the hard work, creativity, and dedication of our entire team and inspires us to continue pushing boundaries that make a meaningful impact in members’ lives. We remain committed to assist our members and communities with free financial education sessions and resources, and to educate consumers about the many benefits of using credit unions for their financial needs.”
TopLine Financial Credit Union, a Twin Cities-based credit union, is Minnesota’s 9th largest credit union, with assets of over $1.1 billion and serves over 70,000 members. Established in 1935, the not-for-profit financial cooperative offers a complete line of financial services from its ten branch locations — in Bloomington, Brooklyn Park, Champlin, Circle Pines, Coon Rapids, Forest Lake, Maple Grove, Plymouth, St. Francis and in St. Paul’s Como Park — as well as by phone and online at http://www.TopLinecu.com or http://www.ahcu.coop. Membership is available to anyone who lives, works, worships, attends school or volunteers in Anoka, Benton, Carver, Chisago, Dakota, Hennepin, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Pine, Ramsey, Scott, Sherburne, Washington and Wright counties in Minnesota and their immediate family members, as well as employees and retirees of Anoka Hennepin School District #11, Anoka Technical College, Federal Premium Ammunition, Hoffman Enclosures, Inc., GRACO, Inc., and their subsidiaries. Visit us on our Facebook or Instagram. To learn more about the credit union’s foundation, visit http://www.TopLinecu.com/Foundation.
CONTACT:
Vicki Roscoe Erickson Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer TopLine Financial Credit Union verickson@toplinecu.com | 763.391.0872
Platform designed to promote excessive, compulsive, and addictive use
SAN FRANCISCO — California Attorney General Rob Bonta and New York Attorney General Letitia James today co-led a bipartisan coalition of 14 attorneys general in filing separate enforcement actions against TikTok for violations of state consumer protection laws. Filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, Attorney General Bonta’s action alleges that TikTok exploits and harms young users and deceives the public about the social media platform’s dangers. The action seeks significant penalties, as well as injunctive and monetary relief, to address TikTok’s misconduct.
“Our investigation has revealed that TikTok cultivates social media addiction to boost corporate profits. TikTok intentionally targets children because they know kids do not yet have the defenses or capacity to create healthy boundaries around addictive content,” said Attorney General Rob Bonta. “When we look at the youth mental health crisis and the revenue machine TikTok has created, fueled by the time and attention of our young people, it’s devastatingly obvious: Our children and teens never stood a chance against these social media behemoths. TikTok must be held accountable for the harms it created in taking away the time — and childhoods — of American children.”
“Young people are struggling with their mental health because of addictive social media platforms like TikTok,” saidNew YorkAttorney General Letitia James. “TikTok claims that their platform is safe for young people, but that is far from true. In New York and across the country, young people have died or gotten injured doing dangerous TikTok challenges and many more are feeling more sad, anxious, and depressed because of TikTok’s addictive features. Today, we are suing TikTok to protect young people and help combat the nationwide youth mental health crisis. Kids and families across the country are desperate for help to address this crisis, and we are doing everything in our power to protect them.”
Use of TikTok is pervasive among young people in the United States. In 2023, 63% of all Americans aged 13 to 17 who responded to a Pew Research survey reported using TikTok, and most teenagers in the U.S. were using TikTok daily; 17% of American teens said that they were on TikTok “almost constantly.”
In today’s lawsuit, Attorney General Bonta alleges TikTok violated California’s consumer protection statutes, the Unfair Competition Law (UCL), and the False Advertising Law (FAL).
According to the complaint, TikTok’s misconduct arises from its underlying business model that focuses on maximizing young users’ time on the TikTok platform so as to enable the company to boost revenue from selling targeted advertising space. TikTok’s misconduct includes:
Deploying a content-recommendation system designed to be addictive in order to maximize the time young users spend on the platform. TikTok’s algorithmic features are designed to keep minors on the platform as long as possible and as often as possible, despite the dangers of compulsive use.
Using manipulative features to addict young users and maximize their time on its platform. These features exploit children’s psychological vulnerabilities and are deployed to keep kids and teens on the platform for longer.
BEAUTY FILTERS
Beauty filters and effects are deeply harmful to young users; they foster unrealistic beauty standards, harm self-esteem, and can induce negative body image issues and related physical and mental disorders. TikTok knows these filters and effects significantly increase platform use, particularly among young users, and retains these features despite their harms.
AUTOPLAY
To manipulate users into compulsively spending more time on the platform, TikTok does not allow them to disable Autoplay. TikTok uses Autoplay to continuously play new and temporary posts; this exploits young users’ novelty-seeking minds and eliminates their autonomy to choose to stop.
ENDLESS/INFINITE SCROLL
Endless scrolling compels young users to spend more time on the platform by making it difficult to disengage. It strips away a natural stopping point or opportunity to turn to a new activity and distorts users’ perception of time.
TIKTOK STORIES AND TIKTOK LIVE
Content on these features is only available temporarily — users must tune in immediately or lose the opportunity to interact. These time-sensitive features are designed to encourage young users to compulsively return to the platform by exploiting their uniquely sensitive fear of missing out.
PUSH NOTIFICATIONS
Push notifications unfairly entice young users by overloading and overwhelming them to return to the platform. Some pushes are designed to keep young users from quitting the platform altogether, and others encourage young users to open the application. TikTok has even used fake notifications to manipulate users into opening its platform.
LIKES AND COMMENTS
At key development states it can be overwhelmingly important for children and teens to be accepted by their peers. TikTok’s design and display of highlighting “likes” as a form of social validation has an especially powerful effect on young users and can neurologically alter teenagers’ perception of online posts, in addition to driving compulsive use.
Engaging in a scheme that deceptively markets the platform and platform features as promoting young users’ safety and well-being. TikTok employs a coordinated array of features, tools, content moderation efforts, community guidelines, and public assurances intended to promote a public narrative that the platform is appropriate and safe for young users and that TikTok prioritizes user safety. In truth, such features and efforts do not work as advertised, the harmful effects of the platform are far greater than acknowledged, and TikTok does not prioritize safety over profit.
Exploiting children’s data without parental notice or consent. Despite knowing certain users are under 13 years old and despite the platform being directed toward children, TikTok has collected and used personal information from children’s accounts without parental consent or notice. Doing so is both unfair and fails to satisfy TikTok’s obligations under federal law.
Attorneys general from the following states join Attorney General Bonta today in filing separate enforcement actions against TikTok to hold it accountable for its role in the children’s mental health crisis: New York, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia. As of today, 23 attorneys general have filed actions against TikTok for its conduct toward youth, including existing actions filed by the attorneys general of Utah, Nevada, Indiana, New Hampshire, Nebraska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, and Texas.
Attorney General Bonta is a steadfast leader in protecting children against the mental health harms of using social media. In March 2022, Attorney General Bonta announced a nationwide investigation into TikTok, and in March 2023, he filed an amicus brief demanding TikTok comply with state investigations. In October 2023, Attorney General Bonta co-led a bipartisan coalition of 33 attorneys general in filing a federal lawsuit against Meta alleging the company designed and deployed harmful features that addict children and teens to their mental and physical detriment, and in November 2023, he announced the public release of a largely unredacted copy of the federal complaint. Last month, Attorney General Bonta issued a statement after Senate Bill 976 (SB 976) was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom. SB 976 provides important new protections for young people in California by resetting the defaults on social media platforms to disfavor addictive algorithmic feeds, notifications, and other addictive design features that lead children and teens to spend hours and hours on their platforms.
A copy of the redacted complaint can be found here.
We’re required by law to publish certain data about Research and Development (R&D) tax incentive claims reported to us by companies (R&D entities). Publishing this information will:
provide transparency on the benefits received by R&D entities
encourage voluntary compliance with the requirements of the R&D tax incentive (R&DTI) program
increase public awareness of which companies have claimed the tax incentive.
Each year, the transparency report will be made up of 2 parts. These are:
When we’ll publish the report
We’re required to publish the R&D data 2 years after the end of the financial year that the data relates to. The delay in publishing this information is designed to address any perceived commercial sensitivity of the data.
We’ll publish the first data report in early October 2024. It will include R&D entities:
that claimed the R&DTI in their 2022 company tax return, and
whose income year commenced on or after 1 July 2021.
What R&D data we’ll publish
The data we’ll publish in the data report is specific and limited to the:
name of the R&D entity claiming the R&DTI
entity’s Australian business number (ABN) or Australian company number (ACN)
‘total R&D expenditure’ – total notional deductions claimed (label Z in Part A of the R&DTI schedule) less any feedstock adjustments (label B in Part B of the R&DTI schedule).
We’ll base this on what the R&D entity provided in its company tax return.
If an R&D entity amended its company tax return, we’ll report both the original information provided by the entity and the last client-initiated amendment lodged with us – including any voluntary disclosures provided during a review or audit.
Commissioner-initiated amendments won’t be published. If, during a review or audit, the Commissioner amended the labels, we’re required to publish the total expenditure on R&D based on the company return lodged before the Commissioner-initiated amendment.
You’re unable to opt out of having your R&D information published in the report. There are no exclusions.
Due to tax law confidentiality provisions in the TAA, we can’t disclose any further information beyond what will be published in the report.
Data notes
Labels in the data report
There will be 5 labels in the data report on data.gov.au:
Name – this is the name of the R&D entity on the date we extracted the data.
ABN or ACN – if the R&D entity had a valid ABN when we extracted the data, then we’ve published the ABN; if not, we’ve published its ACN.
Total R&D expenditure – this is based on the first information the R&D entity provided to the Commissioner and is the total notional deductions (label Z at Part A on the R&D schedule) less feedstock adjustments (label B at Part B on the R&D schedule).
Adjusted total R&D expenditure – this is based on the last amendment the R&D entity provided to the Commissioner and is the total of notional deductions (label Z at Part A on the R&D schedule) less feedstock adjustments (label B at Part B on the R&D schedule).
Income year – this is the income year for the R&D claim.
Notes about the total R&D expenditure amounts
We’ve generally rounded the total R&D expenditure amounts in the data report, so you may see differences between the totals in the data report and the amounts we’ve used in the information and charts in our analysis.
There are also R&D entities that we’ve reported a ‘Nil’ dollar amount for. This could be because:
feedstock adjustments are more than the notional deductions
the R&D entity adjusted the amount in their tax return
the R&D entity did not provide information regarding total R&D expenditure.
Consolidated groups
Where an R&D entity is part of an income tax consolidated group or multiple entry consolidated (MEC) group, the subsidiary members are treated as part of the head company for income tax purposes, for as long as they remain part of the group for income tax purposes.
The published total R&D expenditure amounts are those disclosed by the head company of the consolidated group or MEC group.
Data sources
We’ll get the data for the data report from the company tax return and R&D schedule labels.
Company tax return
We’ll include the entity in the data report if they’ve reported an amount at label 21A or 21U.
R&D schedule
The total R&D expenditure in the data report is the amount of total notional deductions less any feedstock adjustments. If notional deductions less feedstocks adjustments are negative or zero, the figure is reported as Nil.
We’ll use Part A label Z to obtain the total notional R&D deduction amounts we include in the data report – this amount is worked out by adding together items 1 to 9 in Part A of the R&D schedule for both Australian-owned R&D (label X) and foreign-owned R&D (label Y).
We’ll use Part B label B to obtain the feedstock adjustment amount.
Amendments
If you’ve reviewed your R&D claims and believe that there’s an error in the information that we’ll publish, you’re able to correct any errors by lodging an amendment with us in writing.
If you’ve submitted an amendment and it’s not processed before we extract the data, we’ll publish the updated information in the next year’s report. If you’ve amended your R&DTI claim, we’ll publish both the original R&D expense amount and the amended R&D expense amount. If you’ve withdrawn your claim in full, we’ll publish the original R&D expense amount with the amended R&D expense amount published as Nil.
Data assurance process
In preparing the data for publishing, we’ve reviewed and confirmed the data in accordance with the information contained on our systems as at the date we extracted the data.
If you are an R&D entity (or their nominated representative) with data included in the report and there is an error, you can contact us.
What’s not in the report
The information in the transparency report will not include:
the R&D activities conducted by the entity
the calculations behind notional deductions and feedstock adjustments
whether the R&D tax offset received was refundable or non-refundable
the extent and nature of any ATO activity, including any past or ongoing audit or compliance activities
whether the R&D entity was entitled to or received the R&D tax offset.
The report won’t contain information collected by Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR) on behalf of Industry Innovation and Science Australia (IISA) as authorised under the Industry Research and Development Act 1986.
Communication approach
Since September 2023, ahead of the release of the first report, we’ve been:
engaging with key external stakeholders to inform them of the new reporting requirement and to get their input into our approach
communicating directly with all affected R&D entities and their registered tax agents (in October 2023, February 2024 and July 2024), to inform them of the new reporting requirement and encourage them to review their information and amend any errors
communicating directly with those R&D entities that lodged an amendment, to let them know that both their original and amended amounts will be published
communicating directly with those R&D entities that had their claim amended by the Commissioner, to let them know we’re unable to publish the Commissioner-amended amount; we’ll only be publishing the original amount they claimed
issuing broader communications to the community to inform them about the new data report and provide them with access to comprehensive information about the data report.
Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR on behalf of IISA)
ATO.
DISR manages the registration process for the R&DTI program and we review the eligibility of the expenditure incurred on the registered activities. We leverage the skills of each agency to:
reduce compliance costs for business
increase certainty while maintaining program integrity.
The ATO and DISR regularly conduct engagement activities, including compliance reviews and audits of R&D entities to safeguard the integrity of the R&DTI program. Information in relation to these activities is not included in this report.
The R&DTI program is a self-assessment regime. Receiving a registration number from DISR doesn’t mean the R&D activities meet the eligibility requirements. A registration number means the application has been received and is complete. R&D entities may still be subject to compliance action by DISR and the ATO.
About the R&D program contains further details, including the aim of the program and our joint charter with DISR.
Source: United States House of Representatives – Representative Salud Carbajal (CA-24)
Today, Congressman Salud Carbajal (CA-24), a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and Congressman Mike Lawler (NY-17) introduced legislation to strengthen protections for rail yardmasters by giving them the same protections as other rail yard workers.
“Yardmasters serve a critical role in our nation’s railroad network. They oversee the operations of a rail yard and manage the duties of various rail workers” said Congressman Carbajal. “They not only direct the activities of their fellow workers but also passenger and freight trains when they arrive and depart. But currently, there are no limitations to the number of hours a yardmaster can work in a day, week, or month. This is not only dangerous for the well-being of the yardmasters but the safety of workers on the yard and train passengers.”
“Railroad incidents have sparked major concerns here in my district and across America,” said Congressman Lawler. “Ensuring safe conditions for those who operate our railways is essential to ensuring the safety not only of these workers but also of the communities in which these railways operate. Unfortunately, yardmasters are exempt from existing hours of service laws despite the integral rial they play. The Railroad Yardmaster Protection Act will ensure safe conditions for these essential workers and I’m proud to join Congressman Carbajal in introducing this critical common sense legislation.”
The bipartisan Railroad Yardmaster Protection Act would include railroad yardmasters under federal hours of service requirements which currently cover safety-sensitive rail workers such as locomotive engineers, conductors, switchmen, dispatchers, and signal employees.
The bill ensures that a yardmaster may not be required or allowed to remain on duty for more than a total of 12 hours, and then must receive a minimum of 10 hours off duty.
First introduced in 2019, the Railroad Yardmaster Protection Act passed the House in 2020 as part of the INVEST in America Act.
The bill has also been endorsed by SMART, the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers.
The full text of the legislation can be found here.
MILES AXLE Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
The Moscow Model Pavilion at VDNKh celebrated its seventh anniversary on the first weekend of October. More than 5.2 thousand people attended the festive events in honor of this event. This was reported by the Minister of the Moscow Government, the head of the capital’s Department of Urban Development Policy Vladislav Ovchinsky.
“On the weekend of October 5 and 6, the Moscow Model pavilion was visited not only by residents of Moscow, St. Petersburg and various Russian cities, but also by tourists from Belarus, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan and other countries. The exhibition guests were able to look at a 400-fold reduced exact copy of the capital’s center and see 36 lighting shows dedicated to various topics: the history of Moscow, the development of the capital’s architecture, the change of seasons,” said Vladislav Ovchinsky.
The karaoke show “Songs about Moscow” was of particular interest to visitors to the exhibition. The pavilion guests also took part in a special excursion program. There they learned how the model was created, how many years it took, how many people worked on the implementation of the idea, and how the “Moscow Model” differs from other similar projects in the Russian Federation.
Over the two days of celebration, six interactive quizzes were held for all comers. 316 people took part in them, almost 60 of whom received memorable prizes for winning.
An electronic guest book was installed at the exit of the pavilion. Guests shared their impressions using text, images or emoji. Over 100 people took advantage of this opportunity during the holiday weekend.
The Moscow Model Pavilion is located on Sirenevaya Alley at VDNKh. It can be visited free of charge every day from 10:00 to 20:00, except Monday.
“Based on the results of the summer season, the pavilion entered the top 3 most visited sites of the VDNKh Museum City,” noted VDNKh General Director Sergei Shogurov.
The scale of the city model is one to 400, the area is 429 square meters. The idea of creating a copy of the capital arose in 2011. Work began a year later, and on October 3, 2017, the pavilion was opened to visitors. During this time, the model was changed and updated approximately every two to three years. The craftsmen added houses built under the renovation program, landscaped parks, new institutions, and business centers.
The pavilion continues to host a free exhibition of tactile models of six iconic city landmarks: the Spasskaya Tower of the Moscow Kremlin, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the Triumphal Arch, one of Stalin’s seven skyscrapers and the State Historical Museum. For those with limited vision, all models have been supplemented with a description in Braille.
You can find detailed information, view the schedule of light shows and VR attractions, and sign up for excursions on the website and through the mobile application “Moscow Model”.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
MILES AXLE Translation. Region: Russian Federation –
Source: Moscow Government – Government of Moscow –
As part of the implementation of large-scale investment projects (MaIP), the city has leased land plots with a total area of almost 17 hectares in the Western Administrative District of Moscow to investors and developers. This was reported by Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Urban Development Policy and Construction Vladimir Efimov.
“The implementation of large-scale investment projects allows us to develop urban infrastructure and create jobs. Since the beginning of 2024, investors have been provided with almost 17 hectares of land in the west of the capital for the construction of industrial, commercial, social and transport facilities within the framework of the MAIP. Thanks to this, new jobs will appear for city residents. The total area of real estate under construction will exceed 245 thousand square meters,” said Vladimir Efimov.
Two plots of land with a total area of over 11 hectares were allocated for the creation of manufacturing enterprises.
“The provision of land plots without tenders and at a preferential rate of one ruble per year is one of the key measures to support industrial construction, which we are implementing in accordance with the order of Sergei Sobyanin. As part of the MAIP, a food industry production and logistics complex and an enterprise for the production of components for cleaning equipment, small architectural forms and joinery will be built in the west of the capital. It will supply the city with products under an offset contract,” said the Deputy Mayor of Moscow for Transport and Industry
Land lease agreements were concluded with investors for five years. During this time, entrepreneurs must build and commission the facilities.
Minister of the Moscow Government, Head of the Department of City Property Maxim Gaman noted that investors were provided with two plots in Solntsevo with an area of over 0.7 hectares and 1.2 hectares for the construction of educational facilities. Thus, a kindergarten for 350 children will be built on Matrosov Street, and a preschool institution for 200 children will be built on Rodnikovaya Street. The total area of the buildings will exceed 13 thousand square meters.
In Ramenki, the city allocated 0.46 hectares of land for the construction of a supplementary education center. Here, students from family education assistance centers and special schools will receive help with their education and adaptation.
In Novo-Peredelkino, 0.63 hectares were provided for the expansion of the Arctic sports cluster, on the territory of which there are ice arenas, football fields, gyms, a swimming pool, running tracks, a basketball court and other facilities.
MAIP is a special status that investors can obtain for the construction of facilities necessary for the development of urban infrastructure and the creation of jobs. These can be production complexes, innovation centers, social institutions, transport, commercial and other enterprises. For their construction, the city provides land plots for lease for a period of five years.
Earlier Sergei Sobyanin told, that since the beginning of the year, investors have been provided with about 220 hectares of land for the implementation of the MAIP. This is almost twice as much as for the same period in 2023.
Please note: This information is raw content directly from the source of the information. It is exactly what the source states and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
Please note; This information is raw content directly from the information source. It is accurate to what the source is stating and does not reflect the position of MIL-OSI or its clients.
