Lake would likely galvanize Trump supporters to the point that many Republicans think she would be all but impossible to defeat in a primary. But GOP strategists are concerned that Lake would turn off swing voters in the general election, particularly after she contested her loss in the gubernatorial contest in 2022.
Last year, a number of Senate contenders tied to Trump won their primaries but were defeated in the fall. In an effort to avoid another disappointing election, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), chair of the NRSC, has actively recruited candidates he believes are electable in key battleground states, including West Virginia, Montana and Pennsylvania. But Daines has not picked a favorite as of yet in Arizona.
In a CNN interview this week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined to comment directly on a possible run by Lake, though he left Arizona out of his list of top four Senate battlegrounds. He said there is “high likelihood” that GOP leaders would wait until after the primary to determine whether to get involved. “I think there are some other places where with the right candidate, we might be able to compete — in Nevada, Arizona,” he said. The Arizona Senate primary won’t take place until August of 2024.
The NRSC regularly sits down with potential and declared candidates, and such a meeting does not suggest any preference on its part. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, the only Republican who has announced a run for Sinema’s seat, had a meeting with the NRSC earlier this year, as did Karrin Taylor Robson, a businessperson who is considering a campaign. Taylor Robson lost to Lake in the 2022 gubernatorial primary.
Lake’s spokesperson did not provide the names of the senators she is sitting down with this week. The NRSC declined to comment on whether Daines is meeting with Lake. When Lake previously gathered with NRSC officials in February, she did not meet with him.
Lake and her staffers have taken a number of steps recently that suggest she is either close to running for the Senate or positioning herself as Trump’s running mate, should he win the presidential nomination. Her aide, Colton Duncan, said he is “99 percent sure she’s going to run for Senate.” She is releasing a book, “Unafraid: Just Getting Started.” She has also attacked Gallego as too liberal for Arizona.
A GOP strategist close to Lake said she is expected to announce a Senate campaign in the early fall, though others in her orbit said a kickoff could take place earlier.
In addition, Lake has made two stops this year in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state where she happens to have grown up. Last week, she spoke at Conservative Political Action Conference Hungary and met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a venerated international figure in America’s MAGA movement. She is currently in the United Kingdom, where she appeared on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” speaking to him about her lawsuit disputing her loss in the governor’s race as well as her future.
“If for some reason we don’t get a fair outcome in our election, I will run for Senate, most likely,” Lake told him.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“One very famous football club said to me two or three days ago: ‘Whenever we have a problem we say ‘What would the Everton board do, because they always get it right?’” Bill Kenwright, 2021.
Anyone of sound mind would do the exact opposite of what Everton’s delusional chairman and abject board have overseen during the seven years of Farhad Moshiri’s near-ruinous ownership.
Those appointed to run Newcastle’s football operation, for example. Newcastle again showed the wisdom of their £255m investment in new talent since the Saudi takeover in October 2021, along with the astute management of Eddie Howe, as they edged closer to Champions League qualification and pushed Everton towards the Championship with a second emphatic Premier League victory in five days.
Unlike the swift destruction of Tottenham at St James’ Park, Newcastle had to bide their time before delivering another incisive exhibition at Goodison Park. A seventh win in eight outings could have equalled Sunday’s scoreline but for the interventions of Jordan Pickford and VAR. Everton’s strong start was a distant memory by the time Callum Wilson, Joelinton and Alexander Isak were swatting aside the home defence with ease and exposing the chasm in quality between the respective forward lines.
Wilson struck twice, Joelinton once and Jacob Murphy was also on the scoresheet following a mesmerising run from fellow substitute Isak that took him beyond four blue shirts.
Howe shuffled his pack from Sunday but Newcastle’s penetration and winning mentally remained unchanged, victory taking them eight points clear of fifth-placed Spurs with a game in hand.
“We handled the occasion really well,” the Newcastle manager said. “It was a hostile environment and the first goal was always going to be crucial. Our confidence was evident in the second half. Maybe the edge of the game had gone but we had to earn the right to get to that point.”
Three of Newcastle’s goals came down Everton’s right flank where Ben Godfrey had a torrid night. The defender’s inclusion over Nathan Patterson at full back, where he also toiled in the damaging home defeat by Fulham, was a mystifying choice by Sean Dyche, who may have improved Everton’s aggression and physicality but not their prospects of avoiding a first relegation since 1951.
Everton collapsed following Newcastle’s second goal, just as they did against Fulham in the previous home game. With five games remaining to save the club’s top flight status, the first away at Leicester on Monday, the character on display is as alarming as the league table for Evertonians.
Alexander Isak leaves Everton players in his wake during a mesmerising dribble that set up the fourth goal for Jacob Murphy. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images
Dyche said: “In the first half we did everything I wanted them to do against a team that is flying, apart from conceding, but as soon as the second goal goes in the game gets away from us too quickly. The same thing happened against Fulham. We have to correct that very quickly.”
Goodison Road was filled with noise and blue smoke before kick off as thousands of Evertonians waited to greet the team coach. There was even a sustained fireworks display from behind the Gwladys Street and Bullens Road stands when the teams emerged.
It was some reception from a fanbase being put through the wringer once again and Dyche’s team initially responded, controlling proceedings up until the point Joelinton broke away to create Newcastle’s opener.
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The visitors switched play through Matt Targett, who released the Brazilian down the left with a fine first touch. Joelinton gathered speed as he approached the area and cut back inside Godfrey before unleashing a venomous shot. Pickford parried well but the ball struck James Tarkowski and dropped perfectly for Wilson. The striker, one of three changes from the Spurs’ rout, made no mistake.
Everton fans are fearing the worst after a drubbing by Newcastle. Photograph: Carl Recine/Reuters
Dominic Calvert-Lewin had what would have been an exquisite equaliser disallowed for offside in first half stoppage time. He also forced Nick Pope to save early in the second half following good work from Alex Iwobi.
Pickford produced a magnificent save to deny the increasingly prominent Joe Willock when, unmarked on the corner of the area at a Newcastle corner, he curled a volley towards the far corner. The Everton keeper’s finger-tipped intervention was in vain. Seconds later Bruno Guimarães found Willock, who beat Godfrey to the byline too easily and chipped a perfect cross into the six-yard box where Joelinton scored with a textbook header.
It was soon three when Guimarães found Wilson lurking on the edge of the area. The striker was given time and space to pick his spot and chose the top left hand corner of Pickford’s goal. Dwight McNeil reduced the arrears when scoring directly from a corner but only for a matter of seconds. Isak weaved his way through anaemic challenges from Godfrey, Michael Keane and Idrissa Gueye before shooting across goal. Murphy tapped in at the back post.
There was still time for Howe to rub salt into Everton wounds by introducing Anthony Gordon to predictable boos against his boyhood club. Fabian Schär seemed to have applied more when scoring from distance but his fine effort was disallowed for offside by VAR. The two clubs are heading in very different directions.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
The DeSantis administration, however, learned about the agreement in March and then scrambled to respond.
David Thompson, the managing partner from Cooper & Kirk, a Washington, D.C. law firm hired by the newly-installed board, said Disney’s agreements giving it developmental power were not following state law, quoting that they were “illegal, and they will not stand.” Thompson then compared Disney to Scrooge McDuck.
Thompson and Alan Lawson, former Supreme Court Justice, who was also hired by the board, said the district was in violation of the Florida constitution because it gave authority to a private company, and also did not establish procedures before accepting a new developmental agreement at a Feb. 8 meeting.
Disney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The fight against Disney and DeSantis began nearly a year ago after Disney opposed the Parental Rights in Education bill, dubbed as the “Don’t Say Gay,” that prohibits teachers from leading classroom discussions on gender identity and sexual identity in kindergarten through third grade.
DeSantis, who signed the bill into law in March, criticized Disney as a “woke” corporation and pushed the GOP-controlled Legislature to strip the company of much of its authority over the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which allowed Disney to operate its own local government.
The board will meet again on April 26, where staff has been asked to make a resolution voiding the agreements.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chennai: India on Sunday moved a step ahead in getting its own reusable launch vehicle or reusable rocket (simply put similar to space shuttle) with the country’s space agency successfully completing the Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV LEX).
The test was conducted at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR), Chitradurga, Karnataka in the early hours on April 2, 2023.
The Indian space agency said the adaptation of contemporary technologies developed for RLV LEX makes other operational rockets more cost-effective.
In a first in the world, a winged body has been carried to an altitude of 4.5 km by a helicopter and released for carrying out an autonomous landing on a runway.
According to Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the RLV took off at 7:10 a.m. IST by a Chinook Helicopter of the Indian Air Force as an underslung load and flew to a height of 4.5 km (above the mean seal level-MSL).
Once the predetermined pillbox parameters were attained, based on the RLV’s Mission Management Computer command, the RLV was released in mid-air, at a down range of 4.6 km.
The Indian space agency said the release conditions included 10 parameters covering position, velocity, altitude and body rates and others.
The release of RLV was autonomous. RLV then performed approach and landing maneuvers using the integrated navigation, guidance & control system and completed an autonomous landing on the ATR air strip at 7:40 a.m. IST. With that, ISRO successfully achieved the autonomous landing of a space vehicle.
The autonomous landing was carried out under the exact conditions of a Space Re-entry vehicle’s landing – high speed, unmanned, precise landing from the same return path – as if the vehicle arrives from space. Landing parameters such as ground relative velocity, the sink rate of landing gears, and precise body rates, as might be experienced by an orbital re-entry space vehicle in its return path, were achieved, ISRO said.
The RLV LEX demanded several state-of-the-art technologies including accurate navigation hardware and software, pseudolite system, Ka-band Radar Altimeter, NavIC receiver, indigenous landing gear, aerofoil honey-comb fins and brake parachute system.
RLV is essentially a space plane with a low lift to drag ratio requiring an approach at high glide angles that necessitated a landing at high velocities of 350 kmph.
According to ISRO, the LEX had used several indigenous systems like the navigation systems based on pseudolite systems, instrumentation, and sensor systems and others developed by it.
Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the landing site with a Ka-band Radar Altimeter provided accurate altitude information.
Extensive wind tunnel tests and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations enabled aerodynamic characterisation of RLV prior to the flight.
ISRO had demonstrated the re-entry of its winged vehicle RLV-TD in the HEX mission in May 2016. The re-entry of a hypersonic sub-orbital vehicle marked a major accomplishment in developing reusable rockets.
In HEX, the vehicle landed on a hypothetical runway over the Bay of Bengal. Precise landing on a runway was an aspect not included in the HEX mission.
On Sunday, the LEX mission achieved the final approach phase that coincided with the re-entry return flight path exhibiting an autonomous, high speed (350 kmph) landing. The LEX began with an Integrated Navigation test in 2019 and followed multiple Engineering Model Trials and Captive Phase tests in subsequent years.
So far, they’ve been right. But some lawmakers are still growing agitated.
“I think the devil is in the details and we will see what happens,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in an interview. “But has he made decisions that progressives disagree with? Absolutely. We will see what comes up in the next year.”
The emerging gulf between the president and his progressive base provides a window into how Biden world views the looming presidential campaign. As Democrats adjust to divided government, the president — who has watched Democratic predecessors, including one for whom he served as vice president, make similar machinations before — seems comfortable defying some of the wishes of his own party.
The most significant intra-party flashpoints have come over crime, which looms as a defining issue ahead of next year’s election.
Initially, the White House announced it would oppose a GOP-led crime resolution for the District of Columbia on the grounds that it was an infringement on the city’s autonomy. A majority of House Democrats voted against the measure. Then Biden did a sudden about-face earlier this month, saying he would sign the bill if it reached his desk. The president said he continued to back D.C. statehood and home rule, but could not support the city council’s sweeping reforms, which included lowering statutory maximum penalties for robbery, carjacking and other offenses.
The uproar from progressives was sudden and fierce, with many saying they felt blindsided by Biden’s decision after the House had already held its vote.
“If the President supports DC statehood, he should govern like it,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted. “Plenty of places pass laws the President may disagree with. He should respect the people’s gov of DC just as he does elsewhere.”
But Biden’s change echoed a growing worry among Democrats who feared being labeled as soft on crime. Last November, several House races in New York that centered on crime concerns went to Republicans. And just days before the president signaled his opposition to the D.C. bill, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her reelection bid, largely due to the perception she had not done enough to fight crime in the nation’s third-largest city.
Biden’s team has long been wary of charges of being soft on the issue. He has long denounced any liberal call to “defund the police” and has always made sure to twin calls for police reform with support for law enforcement. The D.C. bill, White House aides believed, was too extreme and not reflective of the public’s current mood.
Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat facing his own reelection for his Virginia seat in 2024, defended Biden’s recent decision on signing legislation that would reverse the reform on the D.C. criminal code. He noted even the city’s mayor vetoed the measure when it passed the council.
“I don’t view it as a big political strategy or an election strategy [for Biden]. I just view it on the merits,” Kaine said. “I can understand why he’s doing those things.”
The White House downplayed the disagreement, saying Democrats remain aligned on significant issues like protecting Social Security and Medicare and noting how progressives rallied around the budget Biden unveiled last week. Louisa Terrell, White House director of the office of legislative affairs, made clear the president “is consistent, he’s the same guy from the campaign to the White House.”
“We’re in constant communication with the Hill,” Terrell said. “We’re trying to be respectful, we’re all in the family. Sometimes we hear ‘this could have been done differently’ and we get that. And then we move on and work together.”
But some Democrats fear the president has also begun to shift to the right on the thorny issue of immigration, which also looms as a political vulnerability. The Biden administration last year struggled to contain a record surge of migration at the border. Although illegal border crossings for the past two months have plummeted under new rules, administration officials fear that the lifting of a key pandemic-era immigration restriction in May could fuel another rush of migrants.
Some Democrats already are alarmed by stricter rules the Biden administration plans to implement for asylum-seeking migrants. Now they’re upset he’s considering restarting family detention at the border, a policy the administration had largely ended at the beginning of Biden’s term.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), and Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) — respectively the chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus — issued a joint statement calling on the Biden administration to dismiss “this wrongheaded approach.”
“We should not return to the failed policies of the past,” the lawmakers said. “There is no safe or humane way to detain families and children, and such detention does not serve as a deterrent to migration.”
The White House quickly pointed out that no final decision has been made on family detention. They added that Biden has not changed his position on immigration but is instead responding to changing migration patterns and court orders stemming from GOP lawsuits.
Other Democrats were enraged that earlier this week Biden went back on a campaign pledge to halt drilling on federal land by approving a massive $8 billion plan to extract 600 million barrels of oil from federal land in Alaska.
The Alaska site, known as the Willow Project, would be one of the few drilling agreements Biden has approved freely, without a court order or a congressional mandate. But, officials note, ConocoPhillips has held leases to the prospective site for more than two decades, and administration attorneys argued that refusing a permit would trigger a lawsuit that could cost the government as much as $5 billion.
That did little to assuage anger on the left.
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), the first Gen Z member of Congress, said he was “very disappointed” Biden broke his promise to both environmentalists and young voters.
“Youth voter turnout was at its highest in 2020 & young folks supported him because of commitments such as ‘no more drilling on federal land,’” Frost, 26, tweeted this week. “That commitment has been broken.”
Some progressives have voiced concern that one of their top links to Biden, former chief of staff Ron Klain, has left the White House. But others believe that their relationship with the White House would remain strong, with some on the left praising Biden’s move to aid Silicon Valley Bank.
“What I see the president doing is maintaining a steady hand in the middle of a financial crisis,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), when asked by POLITICO about Biden’s decisions on crime and drilling.
The art of the compromise comes naturally to Biden, a longtime senator who prioritized bipartisanship even when Democrats controlled both congressional branches during his first two years in office. Ignoring some howls of protest from within his own party, Biden often reached across the aisle and was rewarded with some bipartisan victories, including a $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a modest gun reform package.
The ability to pass much legislation going forward was sharply curtailed by the November midterms, in which Republicans secured a narrow victory in the House. And Biden’s budget was perceived as largely aspirational, while another liberal priority — student loan relief — seems destined to be struck down by the Supreme Court.
The percolating progressive resentment comes as Democrats continue to wait for Biden to make his intentions about 2024 official. The president has both declared publicly and privately told confidants he plans to run for reelection. But the timeline for his final decision appears to continually slip as aides note Biden does not face a serious primary challenger from the left while the Republican field has been slow to form.
Advisers had initially looked at an announcement around February’s State of the Union, or perhaps next month, timed to campaign finance reporting deadlines. But while April is still in play, members of the president’s inner circle have begun to discuss May or June for a decision.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
LONDON — Britain was rebuffed by the Biden administration after multiple requests to develop an advanced trade and technology dialogue similar to structures the U.S. set up with the European Union.
On visits to Washington as a Cabinet minister over the past two years, Liz Truss urged U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and senior Biden administration officials to intensify talks with the U.K. to build clean technology supply chains and boost collaboration on artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors.
After Truss became prime minister in fall 2022, the idea was floated again when Raimondo visited London last October, people familiar with the conversations told POLITICO. But fear of angering the U.S.’s European partners and the U.K.’s diminished status outside the EU post-Brexit have posed barriers to influencing Washington.
Businesses, lawmakers and experts worry the U.K. is being left on the sidelines.
“We tried many times,” said a former senior Downing Street official, of the British government’s efforts to set up a U.K. equivalent to the U.S.-E.U. Trade and Technology Council (TTC), noting Truss’ overtures began as trade chief in July 2021. They requested anonymity to speak on sensitive issues.
“We did speak to Gina Raimondo about that, saying ‘we think it would be a good opportunity,’” said the former official — not necessarily to join the EU-U.S. talks directly, “but to increase trilateral cooperation.”
Set up in June 2021, the TTC forum co-chaired by Raimondo, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. trade chief Katherine Tai gives their EU counterparts, Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis, a direct line to shape tech and trade policy.
The U.S. is pushing forward with export controls on advanced semiconductors to China; forging new secure tech supply chains away from Beijing; and spurring innovation through subsidies for cutting-edge green technology and microprocessors.
The TTC’s 10 working groups with the EU, Raimondo said in an interview late last year, “set the standards,” though Brussels has rebuffed Washington’s efforts to use the transatlantic body to go directly after Beijing.
But the U.K. “is missing the boat on not being completely engaged in that dialogue,” said a U.S.-based representative of a major business group. “There has been some discussion about the U.K. perhaps joining the TTC,” they confirmed, and “it was kind of mooted, at least in private” with Raimondo by the Truss administration on her visit to London last October.
The response from the U.S. had been ‘’let’s work with what we’ve got at the moment,’” said the former Downing Street official.
Even if the U.S. does want to talk, “they don’t want to irritate the Europeans,” the same former official added. Right now the U.K.’s conversations with the U.S. on these issues are “ad hoc” under the new Atlantic Charter Boris Johnson and Joe Biden signed around the G7 summit in 2021, they said, and “nothing institutional.”
Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up | Pool photo by Olivier Matthys/AFP via Getty Images
Securing British access to the U.S.-EU tech forum or an equivalent was also discussed when CBI chief Tony Danker was in Washington last July, said people familiar with conversations during his visit.
The U.K.’s science and tech secretary, Michelle Donelan, confirmed the British government had discussed establishing a more regular channel for tech and trade discussions with the U.S., both last October and more recently. “My officials have just been out [to the U.S.],” she told POLITICO. “They’ve had very productive conversations.”
A U.K. government spokesperson said: “The U.K. remains committed to working closely with the U.S. and EU to further our shared trade and technology objectives, through the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the U.S.-U.K. Future of Atlantic Trade dialogues, and the U.K.-U.S. technology partnership.
“We will continue to advance U.K. interests in trade and technology and explore further areas of cooperation with partners where it is mutually beneficial.”
Britain the rule-taker?
Last October, Washington and London held the first meeting of the data and tech forum Johnson and Biden set up. Senior officials hoped to get a deal securing the free flow of data between the U.S. and U.K. across the line and addressed similar issues as the TTC.
They couldn’t secure the data deal. The U.K. is expected to join a U.S.-led effort to expand data transfer rules baked into the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation trading agreement as soon as this year, according to a former and a current British official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The next formal meeting between the U.K. and U.S. is penciled in for January 2024.
Ongoing dialogue “is vital to secure an overarching agreement on U.K.-U.S. data flows, without which modern day business cannot function,” said William Bain, head of trade policy at the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC). “It would also provide an opportunity to set the ground rules around a host of other technological developments.”
In contrast, the U.S. and EU are always at work, with TTC officials in constant contact with the operation — though questions have been raised about how long-term the transatlantic cooperation is likely to prove, ahead of next year’s U.S. presidential election.
“Unless you have a structured system or setup, often overseen by ministers, you don’t really get the drive to actually get things done,” said the former Downing Street official.
Right now cooperation with the U.S. on tech issues is not as intense or structured as desired, the same former official said, and is “not really brought together” in one central forum.
Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy | Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images
“This initiative [the TTC] between the world’s two regulatory powerhouses risks sidelining the U.K.,” warned lawmakers on the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee in a report last October. Britain may become “a rule-taker rather than a rule-maker,” MPs noted, citing the government’s “ambiguous” position on technology standards. Britain has yet to publish a formal semiconductor strategy, and others on critical minerals — like those used in EV batteries — or AI are also missing.
Over the last two years, U.S. trade chief Tai has “spoken regularly to her three successive U.K. counterparts to identify and tackle shared economic and trade priorities,” said a spokesperson for the U.S. Trade Representative, adding “we intend to continue strengthening this partnership in the years to come.”
All eyes on Europe
For its part, the EU has to date shown little interest in closer cooperation with the U.K.
Three European Commission officials disregarded the likelihood of Britain joining the club, though one of those officials said that London may be asked to join — alongside other like-minded countries — for specific discussions related to ongoing export bans against Russia.
Even with last week’s breakthrough over the Northern Ireland protocol calming friction between London and Brussels, the U.K. was not a priority country for involvement in the TTC, added another of the EU officials.
“The U.K. was extremely keen to be part of a dialogue of some sort of equivalent of TTC,” said a senior business representative in London, who requested anonymity to speak about sensitive issues.
U.K. firms see “the Holy Grail” as Britain, the U.S. and EU working together on this, they said. “We’re very keen to see a triangular dialogue at some point.”
The U.K.’s haggling with the EU over the details of the Northern Ireland protocol governing trade in the region has posed “a political obstacle” to realizing that vision, they suggested.
Yet with a solution to the dispute announced in late February, the same business figure said, “there will be a more prominent push to work together with the U.K.”
TTC+
Some trade experts think the U.K. would increase its chances of accession to the TTC if it submitted a joint request with other nations.
But prior to that happening, “I think the EU-U.S. TTC will need to first deliver bilaterally,” said Sabina Ciofu, an international tech policy expert at the trade body techUK.
Representatives speak to the media following the Trade and Technology Council Meeting in Maryland | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
When there is momentum, Ciofu said, the U.K. should join forces with Japan, South Korea and other advanced economies to ask for a TTC+ that could include the G7 or other partners. At the last TTC meeting in December, U.S. and EU officials said they were open to such an expansion around specific topics that had global significance.
But not all trade experts think this is essential. Andy Burwell, director of international trade at the CBI, said he doesn’t “think it necessarily matters” whether the U.K. has a structured conversation with the U.S. like the TTC forum.
Off the back of a soon-to-be-published refresh of the Integrated Review — the U.K.’s national security and foreign policy strategy — Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should instead seize the opportunity, Burwell said, to pinpoint where Britain is “going to own, collaborate and have access to various aspects of the supply chains.”
The G7, Burwell said, “could be the right platform for having some of those conversations.”
Yet the “danger with the ad hoc approach with lots of different people is incoherence,” said the former Downing Street official quoted above.
Too many countries involved in setting the standards can, the former official said, “create difficulty in leveraging what you want — which is all of the countries agreeing together on a certain way forward … especially when you’re dealing with issues that relate to, for example, China.”
Mark Scott, Annabelle Dickson and Tom Bristowcontributed reporting.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
New York: The House Foreign Affairs Committee has voted 24-16 in favour of banning TikTok in the US, advancing a bill that would allow US President Joe Biden to ban the Chinese short video making app in the country.
The Technological Adversaries Act, or DATA Act, directs Biden to sanction or ban TikTok nationwide if his administration finds that the Chinese firm shared American users’ data with the Chinese government.
If that data was used to surveil, hack, or censor users, Biden could impose additional sanctions against TikTok and its parent-company Bytedance, reports The Verge.
“TikTok is a modern day Trojan horse of the CCP used to surveil and exploit Americans’ personal information,” said Rep Michael McCaul (R-TX).
However, some Democrats and civil liberty groups raised objections on the bill.
Democrat Gregory Meeks (D-NY) called the bill “dangerously overbroad”.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also raised its concerns in a letter sent to McCaul.
“Congress must not censor entire platforms and strip Americans of their constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression. Whether we’re discussing the news of the day, live streaming protests, or even watching cat videos, we have a right to use TikTok and other platforms to exchange our thoughts, ideas, and opinions,” said Jenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at ACLU.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is likely to appear before the US Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23 over questions related to TikTok’s relationship with the Chinese government.
Banned in India, ByteDance-owned TikTok has also been in the news for reportedly stealing US users’ data.
The Chinese short-form video app has been banned on mobile devices issued by the US House of Representatives. The House ordered staff to delete TikTok from all mobile phones.
Canada has become the latest country to ban TikTok from government-issued mobile devices.
The country joined the European Union in banning TikTok on government devices.
The European Commission late last month directed all employees to remove TikTok from their corporate devices.
The Juventus coach still considers him central with the new formation and the Brazilian has a clause in the contract which provides for an extension to the fortieth appearance
Alex Sandro’s farewell at the end of the season is no longer so obvious. Far from it. In the last market meetings with the management, Max Allegri indicated the defender who is still central in the project, so much so that he is also taken into consideration for the future.
The Brazilian would automatically earn another year of his contract upon reaching his fortieth appearance, just like Cuadrado last year: in the derby he will take away token number twenty-eight, but for Juve it would no longer be a problem to keep him. No open dialogue, however, with his entourage: let alone the club’s intention to discuss a further extension.
NEW EVALUATIONS
—
The change of module affects the new evaluations above all. Since Juve has returned to playing with a three-man defence, Allegri has found a reliable left arm in Alex Sandro: and the player has been relieved of his role as full-back. The Brazilian is one of the senators in the locker room, among the group’s experienced men. And in a delicate moment like this, while waiting to understand whether or not the team will play in the Champions League in the near future and what type of season they will have to prepare for, an extra year of the player’s contract could come in handy to postpone a more substantial intervention in the department defensive, where a left-footed central player continues to be missing.
February 27, 2023 (change February 27, 2023 | 20:56)
LONDON — Domestic abusers face stricter monitoring under a clampdown unveiled by Rishi Sunak Monday.
The U.K. prime minister kicks off the week with a package of planned reforms aimed at cutting down on the “appalling” crimes, including new duties on a host of public bodies to keep track of and manage convicted offenders.
The government is promising that those handed a year or more in prison or given a suspended sentence for “controlling or coercive behavior” will now be put on a par with offenders convicted of physical violence. It means they will be actively “managed” by the police, prison and probation services, who will have a legal duty to work together.
Meanwhile, a new, small-scale trial program of “Domestic Abuse Protection Notices and Orders” is being set up in parts of Wales, Manchester and London, imposing fresh requirements on perpetrators including potential electronic tagging and a requirement to tell police about name and address changes. Breaches will be treated as a fresh criminal offense.
The U.K. government is also promising to beef up a nationwide scheme known as “Ask for ANI,” which already sees staff in pharmacies across the country trained to discreetly assist victims who approach shop counters and give the “ANI” codeword. The program will now be trialed in 18 social security offices in the U.K., with a dedicated postcode-checker allowing people affected to find nearest support sites.
Home Secretary Suella Braverman is also ordering police forces to treat violence against women and girls as a “national threat” for the first time.
In comments released overnight by No. 10, Sunak said: “No woman or girl should ever have to feel unsafe in her home or community and I am determined to stamp out these appalling crimes.”
Sunak’s government last year unveiled £257 million in fresh funding over two years to help local councils provide refuges and shelters for those fleeing domestic abuse.
But campaign group Women’s Aid warned that more than £800 million would be needed to “sustainability fund all specialist domestic abuse services in England,” and said some services were struggling to stay afloat amid soaring energy costs.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
The transfer of U.S. and German tanks would mark a major development in the West’s effort to arm Ukraine. Top Ukrainian officials, including President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have spent weeks pleading for tanks as Kyiv prepares for fresh Russian offensives in the country’s east.
One of the two U.S. officials said the Biden administration is considering sending around 30 Abrams tanks.
The vehicles would likely come through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, according to a third person familiar with the issue. The program allows Washington to finance the purchase of weapons and equipment for Ukraine, as opposed to pulling them from existing U.S. stockpiles.
The Pentagon never took tanks off the table, stressed a fourth U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter ahead of an announcement. But in recent weeks U.S. officials have publicly cited the difficulties of providing the M1s, the Army’s main battle tank. They have said the Abrams made little operational sense for Ukraine at this moment because they guzzle jet fuel and require long supply lines to maintain.
“The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on. It has a jet engine, I think it’s about three gallons to the mile of jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain,” Colin Kahl, the Pentagon’s top policy official, told reporters last week after a trip to Kyiv. “It may or may not be the right system.”
The developments come after weeks of tense discussions between Washington, Berlin and their European allies. Since Scholz met with U.S. lawmakers last week, the German government has shifted its stance, at one point denying it had linked the transfers of the Abrams and Leopards.
A parade of Democrats and Republicans has pressured the Biden administration to grant Berlin’s request to send U.S. tanks first.
“If the Germans continue to say we will only send or release Leopards on the condition that Americans send Abrams, we should send Abrams,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden ally, told POLITICO moments before Sky News Arabia first broke news of the decision on Tuesday.
The M1 Abrams tanks currently in the U.S. Army’s motor pools would first need to be stripped of sensitive communications and other equipment before being sent to Ukraine, making it an expensive and time-consuming process.
A handful of countries operate less modern versions of the Abrams, including Australia, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait and Morocco, while Poland has 250 on order slated to begin arriving in 2024.
Egypt by far has the most Abrams tanks in service, with over 1,000 older M1A1 models as the result of a decades-long co-production deal with the United States.
Paul McLeary contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
