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What will a Trump presidency mean for the UK-US special relationship?

admin — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 08:57:19 +0000

The remarks by JD Vance, Republican Party nominee for vice-president, have (at least for the British) put the future of the “special relationship” under renewed focus. Vance quipped at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington that, since Labour took over, the UK may be regarded as the world’s first Islamist nuclear power.
As the possibility of a second Trump presidency hoves into view, the Starmer government is making what preparations it can for what may come next.
A number of large and small challenges immediately present themselves. The first is for the relevant key players to get on the best personal terms possible with the incoming administration. Hopeful signs here include the reportedly good working relationships established by the current British ambassador in Washington, Dame Karen Pierce.
She was to be replaced by Sir Tim Barrow, who managed much of the Brexit process. Now it seems she may stay on, or be succeeded by a New Labour grandee – speculation surrounds David Miliband and Peter Mandelson. Although both men would love it, it’s unlikely that Trump’s publicly preferred candidate, Nigel Farage would be appointed. The foreign secretary, David Lammy, has been developing a rapport with Vance, and Starmer was notable in being the first foreign leader to call Trump after the assassination attempt.
What both sides have said and done in the past. Lammy has compared Trump to Hitler (albeit so has Vance), and Labour’s generally internationalist, “woke” values don’t endear themselves to the modern Republican Party. It’s fair to say that the next Trump administration will be the most isolationist and protectionist of any since before the Second World War. On a UK-US free trade agreement, on Nato, on Russia and Ukraine, on Gaza, on climate change and on relations with Iran, among other issues, the two nations have very significant differences of view. Only on China does there seem much convergence of policy, and even there the US is rather more aggressive than the UK.
No, which is why the “special relationship” is so one-sided and so crucial to British national security. The US provides the UK with its nuclear weapons technology, shares crucial intelligence, runs bases and generally supplies top-grade military equipment and technology. The UK is in no position to substitute all of that, and even a pan-European effort to do so, as advocated by French president Emmanuel Macron, has little chance of coming off for years.
Pivot, and history shows that this can be done successfully. Tony Blair was the last Labour prime minister to be confronted with a change of party in the White House, and he did so with some skill. Having spent the best part of a decade building up relations with his ideological soulmate, Bill Clinton – they were both keen on the now neglected “third way” – when the neocon George W Bush won the presidency in 2000, Blair had to adapt.
At one press conference, Bush was asked what he had in common with Blair and all he could come up with was the Colgate toothpaste provided to the visiting British delegation. Initially inclined to put domestic policy ahead of foreign interventions, Bush had his mind changed for him by 9/11 and later the war in Iraq. Blair’s staunch support for both, almost unconditional, was appreciated. Against early expectations, the transatlantic alliance strengthened and Bush valued the counsel of the man he once greeted with “Yo, Blair!”
It would be far more difficult. Quite apart from differences in the two men’s outlook, the fact is that British and American interests have diverged since the 2000s, and sometimes dramatically so. President George W Bush was the president to send troops to Afghanistan but President Donald J Trump was the president to arrange to get American forces out of there. The age of “liberal interventionism” is over, and the last two-term Republican president is barely acknowledged by his own party these days; while Bush’s distaste for Trump is hardly a secret.
Events. At some point in the next presidency, whoever is in power, the reality of Russia’s malign intentions may become clear even to today’s Republican Party and its leadership. In other words, when vital American interests are unequivocally seen to be in danger from Vladimir Putin, then some rapid changes in foreign and defence policy would follow. The most likely would be a closer anti-American alliance that would bind China, Iran, North Korea and Russia in active opposition to the US and its traditional allies, including Israel.
Thus far, Trump has been able to maintain a relatively friendly posture towards Russia with a fairly obsessive and confrontational policy towards China; that could easily end if Putin and Xi Jinping start to move together against the US and its allies, whether in the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East or Europe. At such a point Starmer, even outside the EU, could perform the traditional role of a bridge to Europe.

Gavin Creel, Broadway star known for ‘Hello, Dolly!’ and ‘Waitress,’ dead at 48

admin — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 03:52:09 +0000

Gavin Creel, a Tony-winning Broadway veteran known for his work in productions of “Hello, Dolly!” “Waitress” and “The Book of Mormon,” has died, according to his representative. He was 48.

Matt Polk, a representative for Creel, told CNN that the actor’s passing was confirmed by Creel’s partner Alex Temple Ward. Creel died at his Manhattan home on Monday.

“As an award-winning Broadway star, he brought irrepressible verve, passion, and boundless energy to his onstage roles while devoting his offstage time to advocacy and community-building,” an obituary provided by Polk stated.

Creel was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of sarcoma in July 2024 and underwent treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering, the obituary said.

Creel, who hailed from Findlay, Ohio, made his Broadway debut in 2002 when he originated the role of Jimmy Smith in the stage production of “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” a performance that garnered Creel his very first Tony Award nomination in the best performance by an actor in a lead role in a musical category.

He went on to become a highly celebrated star of the stage, known for his work in both comedic and dramatic roles in many major Broadway and West End productions.

In 2009, Creel earned his second Tony nomination when he starred as Claude Hooper Bukowski in the Broadway revival of “Hair.” He went on to win an Olivier Award in 2014 for best actor in a musical for his performance as Elder Price in “The Book of Mormon.”

Creel won his first Tony in 2017 for his performance as Cornelius Hackl in the revival of “Hello, Dolly!” He starred alongside Bette Midler and David Hyde Pierce in the production.

A post shared by Bette Midler (@bettemidler)

During his acceptance speech, Creel thanked the musical theatre department at his alma mater, the University of Michigan school of Music, Theater and Dance, saying that his education there “as a young person changed my life forever.”

“Ted Lasso” star Hannah Waddingham, who is also a veteran stage actress, wrote that she was “utterly shocked” by the news of Creel’s passing in a post to her Instagram on Monday.

“My heart is achingly heavy for you tonight my friend. I’m so sad that you were taken so soon. I will never forget you as long as I breathe,” she wrote.

A post shared by Hannah Waddingham (@hannah_waddingham)

Creel played the role of Dr. Pomatter in Sara Bareilles’ “Waitress” in the 2019 Broadway production and reprised the role on London’s West End in 2020. Creel’s obituary referred to Bareilles as his “friend and kindred artistic spirit.”

In 2022, Creel and Bareilles teamed back up when they appeared alongside each other in the Broadway production of Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Into the Woods.”

“Gavin lived his life with joy, integrity, humour, wit, and grace. His sparkling presence and generous nature will be deeply missed by all who knew and loved him,” the obituary added.

Creel is survived by his mother Nancy Clemens Creel and father James William Creel, his sisters, Ward and his dog Nina.

Kobayashi Pharma sued in Taiwan over beni kōji products

admin — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 13:57:10 +0000

A Taiwanese consumer group sued Osaka-based Kobayashi Pharmaceutical for compensation for health issues allegedly caused by products related to its beni kōji red fermented rice on Friday, Taiwanese media reported.
The group filed the lawsuit with the Taipei District Court against six firms including a Taiwanese unit of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical and an importer in Taiwan, seeking 168 million New Taiwan dollars (about ¥760 million) in damages allegedly suffered by 55 people.
According to the group, the 55 people mostly have kidney disease symptoms, and some of them are receiving dialysis. An official of the group said that the defendant companies should fulfill their responsibilities with a corporate conscience.
In Taiwan, health problems have been reported among people who took Kobayashi Pharmaceutical’s supplement products purchased in Japan and those who took products made by a Taiwanese firm using the Japanese company’s beni kōji as an ingredient. According to Taiwanese health authorities, the number of such reports reached 69 by Sept. 20.
The latest development in Taiwan came after health problems caused by Kobayashi Pharmaceutical’s supplements containing beni kōji were revealed in Japan in March. Earlier this month, the health ministry said that puberulic acid caused kidney damage to users of the supplements.

Can AI make video games more immersive? Some studios turn to AI-fueled NPCs for more interaction

admin — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 08:56:34 +0000

LOS ANGELES — For decades, video games have relied on scripted, stilted interactions with non-player characters to help shepherd gamers in their journeys. But as artificial intelligence technology improves, game studios are experimenting with generative AI to help build environments, assist game writers in crafting NPC dialogue and lend video games the improvisational spontaneity once reserved for table-top role-playing games.
In the multiplayer game “Retail Mage,” players help run a magical furniture store and assist customers in hopes of earning a five-star review. As a salesperson — and wizard — they can pick up and examine items or tell the system what they’d like to do with a product, such as deconstruct chairs for parts or tear a page from a book to write a note to a shopper.
A player’s interactions with the shop and NPCs around them — from gameplay mechanics to content and dialogue creation — are fueled by AI rather than a predetermined script to create more options for chatting and using objects in the shop.
“We believe generative AI can unlock a new kind of gameplay where the world is more responsive and more able to meet players at their creativity and the things that they come up with and the stories they want to tell inside a fantasy setting that we create for them,” said Michael Yichao, cofounder of Jam & Tea Studios, which created “Retail Mage.”
The typical NPC experience often leaves something to be desired. Pre-scripted interactions with someone meant to pass along a quest typically come with a handful of chatting options that lead to the same conclusion: players get the information they need and continue on. Game developers and AI companies say that by using generative AI tech, they aim to create a richer experience that allows for more nuanced relationships with the people and worlds that designers build.
Generative AI could also provide more opportunities for players to go off-script and create their own stories if designers can craft environments that feel more alive and can react to players’ choices in real-time.
Tech companies continue to develop AI for games, even as developers debate how, and whether, they’ll use AI in their products. Nvidia created its ACE technologies to bring so-called “digital humans” to life with generative AI. Inworld AI provides developers with a platform for generative NPC behavior and dialogue. Gaming company Ubisoft said last year that it uses Ghostwriter, an in-house AI tool, to help write some NPC dialogue without replacing the video game writer.
A report released by the Game Developers Conference in January found that nearly half of developers surveyed said generative AI tools are currently being used in their workplace, with 31% saying they personally use those tools. Developers at indie studios were most likely to use generative AI, with 37% reporting use the tech.
Still, roughly four out of five developers said they worry about the ethical use of AI. Carl Kwoh, Jam & Tea’s CEO, said AI should be used responsibly alongside creators to elevate stories — not to replace them.
“That’s always been the goal: How can we use this tool to create an experience that makes players more connected to each other?” said Kwoh, who is also one of the company’s founders. “They can tell stories that they couldn’t tell before.”
Using AI to provide NPCs with endless things to say is “definitely a perk,” Yichao said, but “content without meaning is just endless noise.” That’s why Jam & Tea uses AI — through Google’s Gemma 2 and their own servers in Amazon — to give NPCs the ability to do more than respond, he said. They can look for objects as they’re shopping or respond to other NPCs to add “more life and reactivity than a typically scripted encounter.”
“I’ve watched players turn our shopping experience into a bit of a dating sim as they flirt with customers and then NPCs come up with very realistic responses,” he said. “It’s been really fun to see the game react dynamically to what players bring to the table.”
Demonstrating a conversation with a NPC in the game “Mecha BREAK,” in which players battle war machines, Ike Nnole said that Nvidia has made its AI “humans” respond faster than they previously could by using small language models. Using Nvidia’s AI, players can interact with the mechanic, Martel, by asking her to do things like customize the color of a mech machine.
“Typically, a gamer would go through menus to do all this,” Nnole, a senior product marketing manager at Nvidia said. “Now it could be a much more interactive, much quicker experience.”
Artificial Agency, a Canadian AI company, built an engine that allows developers to bring AI into any part of their game — not only NPCs, but also companions and “overseer agents” that can steer a player towards content they’re missing. The AI can also create tutorials to teach players a skill that they are missing so they can have more fun in-game, the company said.
“One way we like to put it is putting a game designer on the shoulder of everyone as they’re playing the game,” said Alex Kearney, cofounder of Artificial Agency. The company’s AI engine can be integrated at any stage of the game development cycle, she said.
Brian Tanner, Artificial Agency’s CEO, said scripting every possible outcome of a game can be tedious and difficult to test. Their system allows designers to act more like directors, he said, by telling characters more about their motivation and background.
“These characters can improvise on the spot depending on what’s actually happening in the game,” Tanner said.
It’s easy to run into a game’s guardrails, Tanner said, where NPCs keep repeating the same phrase regardless of how players interact with them. But as AI continues to evolve, that will change, he added.
“It is truly going to feel like the world’s alive and like everything really reacts to exactly what’s happening,” he said. “That’s going to add tremendous realism.”

Young people involved prostitution and drugs on the rise in WC

admin — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 03:51:30 +0000

File: A cold front is moving over the country. eNCA
Hijacked building in Cape Town
Fugitive fraud-accused Michael Lomas is back in SA.
Cultural and Creative Industries Federation of South Africa poster
Michael Lomas back in South Africa.
File: Geordin Hill-Lewis, Cape Town Mayor. (RODGER BOSCH / AFP)
Fugitive fraud-accused Michael Lomas is back in SA.
File: Cocaine with razor blade and bank note.
DELFT, CAPE TOWN – The Western Cape Missing Persons Unit is concerned about the number of young children who prostitute themselves for drugs on the streets.
It is pleading with the provincial Social Development Department to intervene.
READ: Police turn to public to find Delft teens
This comes as the search for 15-year-old Beyonce Hapaguti of Delft, Cape Town, continues. She was reported missing last month.
Hapaguti and her pals were last seen after school on August 30th, but one of her friends, Marion Fredericks, has since returned home after two weeks on the streets.
eNCA’s Nobesuthu Hejana filed this report.

The scary truth about how far behind American kids have fallen

admin — Fri, 20 Sep 2024 17:47:25 +0000

Sometimes, panics are overblown. Sometimes, older generations are just freaking out about the youngs, as they have since time immemorial.
That’s not the case, unfortunately, with kids’ learning right now, more than four years after the pandemic shuttered classrooms and disrupted the lives of millions of children. The effects were seen almost immediately, as students’ performance in reading and math began to dip far below pre-pandemic norms, worrying educators and families around the country.
Even now, according to a new report released this week by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), a research group at Arizona State University that has studied the impact of Covid on education since 2020, the average American student is “less than halfway to a full academic recovery” from the effects of the pandemic.
The report — the group’s third annual analysis of the “state of the American student” — combines test scores and academic research with parent interviews to paint a picture of the challenges facing public schools and the families they serve. That picture is sobering: In spring 2023, just 56 percent of American fourth-graders were performing on grade level in math, down from 69 percent in 2019, according to just one example of test score data cited in the report.
Declines in reading were less stark but still concerning, and concentrated in earlier grades, with 65 percent of third-graders performing on grade level, compared with 72 percent in 2019. Recovery in reading has also been slower, with some researchers finding essentially no rebound since students returned to the classroom.
The report mirrors what many teachers say they are seeing in their classrooms, as some sound the alarm publicly about kids who they say can’t write a sentence or pay attention to a three-minute video.
“Focus and endurance for any sort of task, especially reading, has been really hard for a lot of teenagers” since coming back from pandemic closures, Sarah Mulhern Gross, who teaches honors English at High Technology High School in Lincroft, New Jersey, told Vox.
Meanwhile, even the youngest children, who were not yet in school when lockdowns began, are showing troubling signs of academic and behavioral delays. “We are talking 4- and 5-year-olds who are throwing chairs, biting, hitting,” Tommy Sheridan, deputy director of the National Head Start Association, told the New York Times earlier this year.
If schools and districts can’t reverse these trends, Covid could leave “an indelible mark” on a generation of kids, CRPE director Robin Lake said this week. The effects are greatest for low-income students, students with disabilities, and children learning English as a second language, who faced educational inequities prior to the pandemic that have only worsened today. Covid “shined a light on the resource inequities and opportunity gaps that existed in this country, and then it exacerbated them,” said Allison Socol, vice president for P-12 policy, research, and practice at EdTrust, a nonprofit devoted to educational equity.
The report is the latest effort to catalog what many educators, parents, and kids see as the deep scars — academic, but also social and emotional — left behind by the pandemic.
Earlier this year, the Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA), a nationwide testing company, reported that rather than making up ground since the pandemic, students were falling further behind. In 2023-24, the gap between pre- and post-Covid test score averages widened by an average of 36 percent in reading and 18 percent in math, according to the NWEA report.
When it comes to education, the effect of the pandemic “is not over,” Lake said. “It’s not a thing of the past.”
Nearly all public schools in America closed by the end of March 2020, and while some reopened that fall, others did not fully resume in-person learning until fall 2021.
The switch to remote school, along with the trauma and upheaval of living through a global health emergency in which more than a million Americans died, dealt a major blow to students’ learning. Scores on one set of national tests, released in September 2022, dropped to historic lows, reversing two decades of progress in reading and math, the New York Times reported.
Still, experts were optimistic that students could make up the ground they’d lost. NWEA’s MAP tests, which measure academic growth, showed a strong rebound in the 2021-22 school year, said Karyn Lewis, director of the Center for School and Student Progress at NWEA. But growth slowed the following year, and now lags behind pre-pandemic trends.
Kids “are learning throughout the year, but they are doing so at a slightly sluggish pace,” Lewis said — not enough to make up for their Covid-era losses.
A team of researchers using separate data from state tests appeared to find more hopeful results earlier this year, documenting significant recovery in both reading and math between 2022 and 2023. But after reanalyzing their data, they found that the improvements in reading were probably produced by changes in state tests, not actual improvements in student achievement, said Thomas Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard and one of the leaders of the research team. In fact, though students did gain some ground in math, they showed little recovery in reading between 2022 and 2023.
More recent data does not paint a rosier picture. About half of states have released test results for the 2023-24 school year, and “I don’t see a lot of states with substantial increases” in scores, Kane said.
Many factors probably contribute to students’ slow recovery, experts say. Some may have missed “foundational pieces” of reading and math in 2020 and 2021, Lewis said. Learning loss can be like a “compounding debt,” she explained, with skills missed in early grades causing bigger and bigger problems as kids get older. Chronic absenteeism also remains a big obstacle to learning. Twenty-six percent of students were considered chronically absent in 2022-23, up from 13 percent in 2019-2020.
Children who are in kindergarten and first grade today were too young to experience the shift to remote learning in 2020 and 2021. But they were more likely to be isolated from other children and adults, Lake said. And like their older counterparts, many also experienced the trauma of deaths in the family, poverty, and parents out of work, all of which could have affected their social and emotional development.
Some have argued that pandemic learning loss shouldn’t be a concern because all students were affected — maybe, the argument goes, learning is just different now.
But that’s not the case, experts say.
Students from wealthier school districts are already well on their way to recovery, while students in lower-income areas continue to struggle. “Not everybody is in the same boat,” Kane said.
Despite the dismal numbers, some teachers are seeing successes. When they came back to the classroom after the pandemic closure, Kareem Neal’s students at Maryvale High School in Phoenix, Arizona, were falling asleep in class, having trouble focusing, and struggling to put away their laptops when asked, Neal, who teaches special education science and social studies, told me.
But starting last school year, “a lot of the behavioral challenges dissipated,” he said. “I remember telling so many people, ‘Whoa, the kids are so well-behaved.’”
Gross, the New Jersey English teacher, said she has seen improvement since her students were required to leave their cell phones at her desk during class. “For the first time in years, I’m seeing them talk to each other,” she said.
Some schools have had success reducing chronic absenteeism, including a middle school in Salem, Massachusetts, that aimed to make education more fun by introducing more field trips and hands-on learning, according to the CRPE report. “It’s just like a happier version of school,” said one student cited in the report.
There’s still time to help kids who are struggling, experts say. Most of the strategies proven to work are simple and low-tech, like tutoring and summer school, according to the CRPE report. Staffing shortages and the sheer logistical difficulty of setting up large-scale tutoring programs, however, have made even these solutions a challenge for districts, Lewis said. The expiration of pandemic-era federal funding later this month will only make matters worse. “A system that actually needs more is about to have less,” EdTrust’s Socol said.
And districts have to actually make recovery programs accessible to all, and convince families to participate. In Louisiana, for example, just 1 percent of students eligible for a post-pandemic literacy tutoring program actually participated, according to the report, and districts often struggle to get students to enroll in summer school.
But if schools don’t act, kids could face deficits in basic skills that could haunt them into adulthood, leading to difficulty attaining higher levels of education, finishing college, and lost earnings in their working lives.
Because of grade inflation, many parents are also unaware that their children are behind academically. “One of the most powerful things would be if teachers told parents when their child was below grade level,” Kane said. In practice, that often doesn’t happen.
But more than that, schools need to rebuild the relationships among students, teachers, and families that frayed during the pandemic, experts and educators say. “People want to feel like a part of a bigger community again,” Neal said. “We need to figure out ways to make that happen so that students are not feeling left out.”

Villagers live in peril as 8 people drowned by Vaitarna dam waters in 3 years

admin — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:48:47 +0000

THANE: Gangubai Padir is devastated at the unexpected death of her husband Bhaskar. Nine days after the 30-year-old sole breadwinner of his eight-member family was swept away by the sudden release of water from the Middle Vaitarna dam, the family is left with ₹500 and rice that will last them two months. Bhaskar single-handedly managed their three-gunta rice farm and also worked as a casual labourer in Kalyan.
“Every morning, my daughter asks about her father, and I don’t know what to tell her,” said Gangubai. “I worry about our future. Who will be held accountable for releasing the dam water without prior warning? Will the government give us compensation?”
Savarde and Dapora villages in Palghar and Thane districts respectively are situated five kilometres downstream from the Middle Vaitarna Dam, which, at 84 meters, is the third tallest in the state. Built in 2012, it stores 455 million litres of water to help fulfil the water demand of Mumbai, around 135 km away.
Villagers told HT that after the dam was built, they used to receive advance notice by post about the release of excess water. However, for the past three years, they have not received such notifications nor have sirens been used to alert them. The announced water release has led to the deaths of at least eight people in the last three years.
Savarde’s river-crossing crisis
Savarde village faces significant transportation challenges. Villagers have access to only two taxis to and fro that cost ₹200 per shared trip. The taxis drop passengers to the Shahapur bus stop, where they board a bus to Umbermali station for ₹20, followed by a train to Kalyan costing ₹25. The return trip incurs the same cost, making travel expensive for the villagers, who are predominantly casual or brick-kiln labourers earning ₹500 a day.
To save money, villagers and schoolgoing children often use a dilapidated bridge to cross the Vaitarna river and reach Dapora village, five km away. This route, which costs them ₹50, is much more economical than travelling by road and four times shorter than the 20 km by road.
Three years ago, the wooden plank they were using was replaced by this temporary iron bridge, now in bad condition, after intervention by Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray. The primary concern, said villagers, was that the river swells rapidly and becomes dangerous within seconds of the Middle Vaitarna Dam opening its gates without warning.
“When the dam gates open, the river’s flow is so powerful that people are swept away,” said Hanumant Padir, the sarpanch of Savarde village. “Despite repeated requests to the dam authorities for advance notice, we don’t receive information about water release. Following our small protests (after Bhaskar’s death), the engineer has promised that a siren will be sounded.”
Hanumant alleged that the dam engineer was often drunk or absent. “On September 9, the dam’s five gates were opened without warning, and Bhasker was swept away by the current,” he said. “We demand accountability from the dam authorities for their negligence and lack of proper communication.”
The Middle Vaitarna Dam is managed by the BMC. Senior BMC engineer Jayant Kharade said that they had specific protocols for releasing excess water. “When the dam is full, it is dangerous to delay the release of water beyond the permitted limit,” he said. “Bhaskar Padir’s death was unfortunate but the water release was not sudden—it began at 9 am.” Kharade also claimed that the dam authorities always informed the tehsil authorities in advance about the water release.
The engineer said he would investigate why the villagers did not hear the siren and said that after Bhaskar’s death, he instructed the water release from the Upper Vaitarna Dam, which reaches the Middle Vaitarna, to be stopped. He said he sympathised with the villagers who travelled across the overflowing river for lack of affordable transport but said it was dangerous.
‘Give us a bridge’
For years, villagers have been requesting a permanent sturdy bridge to cross the river. “Ideally, government officials should have anticipated the need for this bridge,” said Hanumant. “Some tahsildars are aware of the situation but PWD officials consistently claim they cannot build it because the area is not under their jurisdiction.”
When questioned, Vishal Ahirrao, deputy engineer, PWD, said, “The road leading to the Vaitarna river falls under the forest department, and we need its permission to build an 80-metre bridge. Both the Palghar and Thane forest departments have issues, which is why the project is still pending.” Forest officials were not available for comment.
In the absence of a bridge, villagers suffer more than the risk of death. “Our children cannot finish their education because of the death of family breadwinners,” said a villager. “This affects job prospects and finding marriage partners. Even those who do marry have to send their young children to ashram schools, as there is no future for them in the village.”
CASE STUDIES
Heroic rescuer lost to river current
Bhaskar Padir was helping Bhau Shivram Pawar move household goods across the overflowing river. After two trips, he slipped due to the sudden water current from the dam discharge. Pawar’s 11-year-old daughter was on his shoulders, and eye-witnesses saw him holding on to her for a kilometre until fishermen rescued her. But Padir lost his own life.
“I wasn’t feeling well so I asked Bhaskar to help,” said a dejected Pawar. “Despite the powerful water flow, I decided to move the children one by one with Bhaskar’s help, as he was a skilled swimmer. When he was carrying my daughter Rujita, the water level had risen. He slipped but held on to Rujuta to prevent her from drowning. I will be forever grateful to him.”
After Bhaskar’s disappearance, villagers repeatedly requested the dam authorities to close the gates to search for his body but alleged that they remained open. After the villagers protested, the gates were closed, allowing them to recover his body.
When the sarpanch requested compensation from the tehsil office, he was told that it couldn’t be given since it wasn’t raining heavily that day and so the death was not considered a natural disaster.
Man Survives All-Night River Ordeal
Santosh Nimbare spent a whole night last week clinging to a rock. The 25-year-old sustained injuries after the river’s strong currents swept him over several rocks after the dam water was released. His family later found him near the river and rescued him.
Nimbare, who works as a casual labourer in Kalyan, missed his usual train and reached Dapode village at 9.30 pm. “Despite the powerful water flow, I decided to continue home to assist my ailing father,” he said. “As I walked through the water, I slipped and hit my head on a rock. After getting dragged over several rocks for about a kilometre, I managed to hold onto a rock. After an hour, I used all my strength to pull myself up and sit on the rock.”
Shadow of trauma cast by mother’s death in river
Ramesh Zole, 23, lost his mother three years ago, when she was swept away by a sudden surge of dam water while fetching water from the river. Her decomposed body trapped under the rocks was recovered after eight days. The incident traumatised his father so much that he lost his mental balance.
Zole, who had hoped to complete his graduation, has given up on that dream and taken up labour work. “My mother was the strength of our family,” he said. “She and my father worked as labourers to support my education. But since her death, my father has been unwell, and my only concern now is to care for him.”

Dave Grohl’s daughters react after rocker admits to cheating

admin — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 03:52:56 +0000

Dave Grohl, his wife Jordyn Blum, and daughters Violet, Harper and Ophelia attended the Grammys together in 2023. Photo / Getty Images
Foo Fighters star and father-of-three Dave Grohl has admitted he cheated on his wife Jordyn Blum and secretly became a father to a baby girl.
Now, the 55-year-old singer’s two oldest daughters Violet, 18, and Harper, 15, have deleted their social media accounts amid the news, reports the Daily Mail UK.
Their parents Grohl and Blum, 48, first met in 2001 and married in 2003, going on to welcome Violet, Harper and 10-year-old Ophelia together.
It comes after Grohl shared a statement on Instagram revealing his infidelity, writing, “I’ve recently become the father of a new baby daughter, born outside of my marriage. I plan to be a loving and supportive parent to her.”
He acknowledged his family in the statement, writing, “I love my wife and my children, and I am doing everything I can to regain their trust and earn their forgiveness. We’re grateful for your consideration toward all the children involved, as we move forward together.”
The couple are typically private but have appeared in public together recently, including at the 2023 Grammy Awards along with their daughters.
In 2024, the usually private couple made a high-profile appearance at Wimbledon, with the former Nirvana star’s appearance – slicked back hair with a suit and tie – making headlines.
They celebrated 20 years of marriage last year.
Discussing his family in 2007 with The Guardian, Grohl said his wife and daughter Violet were “anchors that keep me from completely disappearing”.
“I try to be kind to everybody. I try to be as nice as I can to everyone in life. This is something my mother taught me when I was young; be kind,” Grohl told the Herald’s Karl Puschmann in 2022.
Violet joined her dad and the rest of the Foo Fighters onstage at Glastonbury Festival last year to sing Show Me How. In 2021, the duo released a cover of Nausea by 1980s punk rock band X, and in 2020 Violet sang Kurt Cobain’s vocal parts during a performance of Nirvana’s Heart-Shaped Box with her father.
Grohl has recently toured with the Foo Fighters after the release of their album But Here We Are in June last year, playing shows in Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland in January this year.

‘I’m very lucky my mam feeds us twice a week’: Families struggling to make ends meet

admin — Tue, 10 Sep 2024 14:24:40 +0000

According to new estimates released last week by the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), almost 230,000 children in the State are going without basic items and activities, as families struggle financially in the wake of rising house and rent prices, along with the general cost of living.
For families finding it difficult to make ends meet, there is constant worry and stress about what an unexpected bill or unplanned cost might mean. For others, the worry of trying to keep warm as we approach the winter doesn’t bear thinking about.
Here, three parents offer a glimpse into their daily financial situation.
Ciara is a single parent. She has a toddler and earns €31,000 annually working in a call centre. “All the clothes for my child are second hand,” she says. “I get them from other people.”
Ciara tries to put some money by, where she can, for the heating, until she builds up enough to buy oil. She doesn’t put the heating on in the evening when she comes home from work if she can help it. She says, in the cold weather, she goes to bed shortly after her child does, to help cut down on heating costs.
Their house needs work she can’t afford. There’s a hole in the roof. The leak has come down the side of the wall. “I’ve a towel stuck in it and buckets.” She’s grateful the weather hasn’t been too bad the last few days, but she’s worried about winter. She has taken out a loan, but she’s not sure if there’ll be enough to get the roof fixed and get oil for winter. “I don’t want to think about it.”
She is trying to save money where she can. “I’m trying to see where I can cut back.” In supermarkets, she buys food that has been marked down in price because it will go out of date shortly. “I buy them up and put them in the freezer. Stuff you wouldn’t be seen dead doing before, that you wouldn’t want people to see.”
[ Ten ways to reduce the costs of winter, the most expensive seasonOpens in new window ]
Because her child is so young, he’s oblivious to what’s going on. “But I don’t know what it will be like when he’s a bit older,” Ciara says.
Ciara hasn’t had a holiday or any kind of break in eight years. She works in a different county to the one in which she lives, and finds the cost of diesel very difficult to manage.
She just can’t see a way out of the position she and her young child are in.
Shane works in the public sector. He earns €35,000 and is a single father to two children. He’s finding trying to manage financially “a genuine struggle”.
This is especially true in the aftermath of back to school. “Shopping on a Sunday has become a smaller basket and each bill gets pushed a week more each time. Trying to do everything and feel like I’m not failing them is a weekly struggle.”
Shane has cut most of the little treats he used to buy for his family out of his shopping to try to manage the food bill. He tries to always buy whatever food is on offer and shops between supermarkets to try to get the most affordable options he can. He goes without himself, so that he can provide as best he can for his children.
He feels the guilt of peer pressure when he finds himself unable to buy the sort of clothes his children might prefer. And he’s having to negotiate which trips in the car he can afford to take, in a desperate effort to cut back on petrol.
“I won’t put petrol in the car,” sometimes, he explains. “You’re deciding not to go for a spin because you think I need to get the [children] to training on Thursday. You find yourself looking at things like that.”
He’s cut back on days out for the children too. As we edge closer to winter, Shane finds himself wondering week on week, how many weeks he can push back the need to buy oil. “It’s a hard thing to say as a parent, ‘we’re not going to put on the heat this week – we’ll put on the heat next week’.”
With Christmas coming into line of sight, Shane counts up the number of child benefit payments due before then. He hopes it will cover the costs of Santa, but lives in fear that something else could crop up. “Let’s hope there isn’t a bill. Let’s hope the car doesn’t stop. Let’s hope there isn’t something that will take that money.”
He worked overtime last Christmas to try to help improve his situation, but that saw his other social welfare benefits reduced. “It’s a worry for this time of year.”
Amy and her partner have one child. Her partner is self-employed and she estimates their combined household income is about €49,000.
“I’m very lucky my mam feeds us twice a week,” she says. “The luxury of getting a family meal. But that saves us a bomb.”
She tries to shop smart to get as many meals as possible from the food she buys, but says she’s “100 per cent” dependent on her mother feeding her family a couple of times a week. “I’m going around supermarkets trying to calculate stuff in my head,” she explains, as she tries to work out if she can “afford the treat this week”. She says her community is incredible – if one of the neighbours has sweets they will share with the other children, so that helps ease some of the pressure.
[ The Irish Times view on child poverty in 2024: so much still to be doneOpens in new window ]
Her son’s grandparents bought most of her son’s school uniform for him. Other clothes are hand-me-downs. Her little boy loves football, she says, but she could never afford to buy him a “real jersey”. She’s had to cut back on activities, such as sports, that her son wanted to take part in, as she couldn’t afford the cost.
The couple had been trying for another baby, but it didn’t happen. Their existing financial situation, and inability to afford treatment, meant they had to give up on that dream.
She’s worried about heating bills as winter approaches. There have been times when Amy reduced heating use to make sure she could cover her mortgage. “Even if it’s freezing”, she won’t turn on the heating outside of the winter months. “I can’t justify it in my own head.”

High Court dispute between X and data regulator is resolved

admin — Sat, 07 Sep 2024 09:16:34 +0000

A High Court dispute between the operator of the ‘X’ social media platform and the Data Protection Commission over the use of personal data to train artificial intelligence (AI) systems has been resolved.
The dispute centred around the DPC’s concerns about the processing of personal data of millions of X’s European users, and the alleged use of that information to train any of the respondent’s Artificial Intelligence systems.
The High Court heard on Wednesday that the proceedings could be struck out after Twitter International Unlimited Company gave a permanent undertaking to the court
The undertaking is to the effect that data from EU/EEA users posted on the X platform which was to be used for developing, refining and training the search service of the platform, known as ‘Grok’ between May 7th 2024 and August 1st 2024, the period when the relevant data is alleged to have been processed, shall be deleted and not processed.
The undertaking was given on behalf of Twitter International, by its counsel Declan McGrath SC before Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds in a hearing on Wednesday.
Mr McGrath appearing with Shelly Horan BL, instructed by A & L Goodbody solicitors, said that the undertaking is to replace a temporary one which had previously been offered to the court.
Counsel added that the relevant data has already been deleted, and the DPC’s proceedings could be struck out with no further order required from the court.
Striking out the action Ms Justice Reynolds welcomed the resolution of the action.
The DPC consented to the proceedings being struck out.
In proceedings launched last month the DPC, represented by Remy Farrell SC and David Fennelly BL, instructed by Philip Lee Solicitors had sought orders against Twitter including one suspending, restricting, or prohibiting the respondent from processing the personal data of X users for the purposes of developing, training or refining any machine learning, large language or other AI systems used by Twitter.
This data would be used for users of Twitters enhanced search tool being provided to Premium and Premium + users of the platform, under ‘Grok’ the DPC had claimed.
The DPC also claimed that the manner in which Twitter International is processing data to train Grok is not in compliance with its obligations under the GDPR, the EU regulation that sets guidelines for information privacy and data protection.
It was also claimed that Twitter International has refused requests from the DPC to cease processing the personal data in question or to defer the launch of the next edition of ‘Grok.’
As a result, the DPC argued that the matter was urgent and that it needed to act by way of court proceedings to protect data rights and freedoms as guaranteed under GDPR.
The DPC’s claims were denied, and the respondent argued that it was at all times GDPR compliant.
In its initial response to the claims Twitter International said it would oppose the “draconian” orders being sought by DPC, and had further argued that if granted the orders would prevent the social media platform from carrying out the essential functions that are required for the provision of the X platform in the EU and EEA.
The action was the first time that an application for such orders, which are being sought under the 2018 Data Protection Act, was made before the Irish courts.
Ends.