The Prime Minister replied that he did, adding: “Yesterday, Sir Olly Robbins was asked if he shared that decision with me, No 10 or any other ministers. He gave a clear answer: no. That puts to bed all the allegations levelled at me by those opposite in relation to dishonesty. Source link
Delivery of the government’s new “experts at hand” SEND support service is “at risk” because of a chronic shortage of educational psychologists, an influential think tank has warned. Pupils in some areas are 20 times less likely to get support from an educational psychologist, the Education Policy Institute research suggests, prompting calls for government to boost funding and training. It comes a day after the government set out further details on its plans to create a new “experts at hand” service, which is supposed to improve access to external support for mainstream schools from staff like educational psychologists. James Zuccollo, the EPI’s director for school workforce, said: “This report highlights a stark reality: we cannot deliver the government’s goal of inclusive mainstream education while the educational psychologist workforce remains critically under-resourced. “The £1.8 billion ‘experts at hand’ programme provides a welcome framework, but its sufficiency is entirely dependent on a stable EP pipeline. “Given the length of specialist training required, the government’s three-year delivery timeline is at risk without additional investment to reach adequate staffing …
ATLANTA (AP) — A long-lasting weather pattern is poised to blast hot air like a furnace across the eastern United States, with the unusual heat wave threatening to shatter record high temperatures on Wednesday in big cities including New York, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The heat is unusual for April, not only because it’s scorching much of the nation so early in the year but also for its duration. The near-record temperatures are expected to last into this weekend, forecasters say. The potentially dangerous heat comes after severe storms tore through Kansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin on Monday and Tuesday. There’s a possibility of more storms on Wednesday. While it’s not unprecedented to see high temperatures climb toward 90 degrees (32 Celsius) on an April day, the length of such an April heat wave is rarely seen, experts say. “That’s borderline unprecedented as far as the duration of it this time of year,” said John Feerick, senior meteorologist at the forecasting firm AccuWeather.com. Feerick said that starting Wednesday “we’re going to have records challenged from basically …
It’s hard to overstate how remarkable the spectacle is: Right-wing broadcasters Mark Levin and Megyn Kelly are trading sexual insults on social media, while Tucker Carlson is suggesting the president might be the Antichrist and Candace Owens is urging Congress to remove him under the 25th Amendment. The house that Donald Trump built is crumbling. For nearly a decade, the MAGA movement has projected an image of absolute cohesion — an ecosystem where politicians, media figures and voters moved in lockstep. Now the Iran war has done something two impeachments, four indictments and an insurrection could not: It has forced that ecosystem to turn inward and exposed the contradictions that were always there. For years, Trump’s critics have assumed that exposure of his misconduct would eventually erode his support and change his supporters’ minds. But the durability of the MAGA base has shown the short-sightedness of that assumption. Identity, not information, has been the dominant force of Trumpism. But the Iran war is cutting through that dynamic because criticism of it is not easily reframed …
The U.S. president has changed his mind multiple times on the issue. But in February, Trump warned Starmer that he was “making a big mistake” in giving over the island. “This land should not be taken away from the U.K. and, if it is allowed to be, it will be a blight on our Great Ally,” Trump said. The British government earlier this week acknowledged that it’s running out of time to pass the legislation. “We continue to believe the agreement is the best way to protect the long-term future of the base, but we have always said we would only proceed with the deal if it has U.S. support,” a U.K. government spokesperson said Saturday, according to the Guardian. The agreement was meant to avoid a potentially painful and expensive legal dispute with Mauritius over the former colony. Indeed, after Trump’s intervention last month, Mauritius said that it was exploring legal tools against London. Toby Noskwith, a spokesperson for campaign group Indigenous Chagossian People, told Reuters that questions needed to be asked about “the …
“DEEPLY FRUSTRATING” The UK had still not received a formal exchange of notes from Washington – a technical step but a legal necessity for the treaty to be enacted, Britain’s PA news agency reported. Time has consequently run out to pass the legislation before parliament is dissolved in the coming weeks, it said, quoting a government source as saying the situation was “deeply frustrating”. Main opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the agreement should now find its “rightful place – on the ash heap of history”. “That it took so long is another damning indictment of a prime minister who fought to hand over British sovereign territory and pay 35 billion pounds to use a crucial military base which was already ours,” she said. Downing Street said the government would continue to “engage with the US and Mauritius”. “Diego Garcia is a key strategic military asset for both the UK and the US. Ensuring its long-term operational security is and will continue to be our priority – it is the entire reason for the …
Nelly Furtado certainly knows how to promote her music. The singer used her edgy style and curvaceous figure to grab her followers’ attention when she plugged her new single, “Electric Circus,” on Thursday. The 47-year-old looked phenomenal in a strapless black dress that featured a voluminous skirt and leather panel detailing. The eye-catching dress exaggerated Nelly’s killer curves, and she added a rocker edge with a leather jacket worn off her shoulders, sheer gloves, sunglasses, and statement jewelry. “Electric Circus X @boi1da is out Friday!” she captioned a clip of herself miming along to the track on Instagram. While Nelly is enjoying a career resurgence and releasing new music, she revealed late last year that she has decided to “step away” from performing live. © InstagramNelly commanded attention in her leather look Reminiscing about her 25-year career alongside a photo of herself when she was just 20, Nelly wrote on Instagram: “25 years ago today my first album Whoa, Nelly! was released. “In the first slide I am 20 years old, about to play my …
Not all memories that were revisited were just as sweet, however. For artist Eunice Hannah Lim, waiting for her mentee Foo Hui Wen at Tampines Changkat Community Club resurfaced memories of a somewhat fraught day when they were racing against the clock to complete a mural there before the next morning. Lim, 34, remembered being “really furious” when Foo left midway through the project to meet some friends before returning hours later. “It was supposed to be her wall, and she needed to take responsibility and ownership,” Lim said. For actor and content creator Dharmadasa D Dharamahsena, more commonly known as Das DD, his search took him to his childhood home in Teck Whye, where his parents got divorced. “It doesn’t bring back really good memories,” the 36-year-old said. “But if I see my mother there, I feel maybe we could find closure in that space. Then we can remind each other that we’ve moved on.” WATCH PART 2: Growing up with a single mother — Can memories lead Das back to her? (45:17) Source …
America prides itself on supposedly being the wealthiest, most advanced country with the highest standard of living in the world, the top example of a so-called “first-world country.” But it’s becoming harder and harder to justify that title, as a woman from Uganda pointed out. Aketch Joy Winnie recently shared that a lot of the places we think of as “undeveloped countries” are far more advanced in a lot of ways than the United States has ever been, and it might be time for us to rethink how we’re defining which countries are and are not advanced. The woman’s description of Uganda calls into question what it means to be a ‘third-world country.’ “Why do you call us a ‘third-world’ country?” TikToker Aketch Joy Winnie opened her video about her home country, Uganda, which is regarded as one of the “least developed countries” by the United Nations. “Least developed countries” is one of several newer terms, including “developing countries,” created to replace the phrase “Third-World countries” because aside from its outdated origins in the Cold War, the often …
Meta has paused all its work with the data contracting firm Mercor while it investigates a major security breach that impacted the startup, two sources confirmed to WIRED. The pause is indefinite, the sources said. Other major AI labs are also reevaluating their work with Mercor as they assess the scope of the incident, according to people familiar with the matter. Mercor is one of a few firms that OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI labs rely on to generate training data for their models. The company hires massive networks of human contractors to generate bespoke, proprietary datasets for these labs, which are typically kept highly secret as they’re a core ingredient in the recipe to generate valuable AI models that power products like ChatGPT and Claude Code. AI labs are sensitive about this data because it can reveal to competitors—including other AI labs in the US and China—key details about the ways they train AI models. It’s unclear at this time whether the data exposed in Mercor’s breach would meaningfully help a competitor. While OpenAI …
