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US Senate votes to reopen govt
Jan 23, 2018 | International news | 0 |
Image: REUTERS
U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gestures to reporters after lawmakers struck a deal to reopen the federal government three days into a shutdown on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S.
Reports say Senate Democrats in the United States have joined Republicans in voting for a short-term funding bill that will reopen the government this Tuesday after a lack of consensus shuttered the Federal Government at midnight on Friday.
A deal struck between a bipartisan group of Senators will now see the government funded until February 8 with an assurance from the majority leader that legislation on immigration reform, a key Democratic demand, would be taken to the Senate floor in a fair process towards a vote; even if a deal is not reached by the deadline.
The Senate voted 81-18 to re-open the government; a measure expected to pass the House of Representatives and then be sent to the White House for President Trump's signature.
Democratic leader Chuck Schumer announced the deal on the Senate Floor.
"The White House refused to engage in negotiations over the weekend. The great deal-making President sat on the side lines. Despite and because of this frustration, I've been having conversations with the Republican leader of the weekend about a path forward. After several discussions, offers, counter offers, the Republican leader and I have come to an arrangement. We will vote today to re-open the government, to continue negotiation a global agreement with the commitment that if a commitment isn't reached by February 8th, the senate will immediately proceed to consideration of legislation dealing with DACA," said Schumer.
The Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme is an Obama-era policy that allowed undocumented immigrants who arrived as children in the country legal status to remain.
This was rescinded by the Trump administration last September with a deadline for its expiration in early March, prompting Democrats to use the leverage they had over government funding to push for a deal on DACA.
"The process will be neutral and fair to all sides. In a few hours the government will reopen. We have a lot to do. The issue of the dreamers demands resolution. A budget must be written, healthcare has to be addressed, relief provided to disaster stricken parts of our country, pensions and opioids, pensions and childcare. The Trump shutdown will soon end but the work must go on and it will," added Schumer.
The Republican leadership says it will take up legislation on DACA as long as the government remains open.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says: "I think if we've learned anything during this process, is that a strategy to shut down a government over the issue of illegal immigration is something the American people didn't understand and would not have understood in the future. So I'm glad that we've gotten past that and we have a chance now to get back to work."
Democrats have warned the Republican leader to keep his word.
With immigration being a hot button topic, it remains unclear whether a future Senate agreement will win the approval of the even more conservative House of Representatives.
-SABC
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Home•Academy success for five brilliant...
Academy success for five brilliant female engineers
Five young female engineers who have been outstandingly successful in their respective fields at an early stage of their careers will each receive a prestigious award and a £3,000 prize at the Royal Academy of Engineering Awards Dinner in London on 11 July.
All five are winners of the RAEng Engineers Trust Young Engineer of the Year competition, awarded by the Academy with support from the Worshipful Company of Engineers.
The overall winner, Rosie Goldrick, will also receive the Sir George Macfarlane Medal for excellence in the early stage of her career.
(l-r) Winners of the RAEng Engineers Trust Young Engineer of the Year competition – Dr Áine Ní Bhreasail, Dr Giorgia Longobardi, Rosie Goldrick, Dr Mariia Sorokina & Sophie Harker / Picture: Royal Academy of Engineering
Rosie Goldrick
Rosie Goldrick joined MASS Design Group's Kigali office in September 2016 as a structural engineer from Engineers Without Borders. She now leads a diverse team of international and multidisciplinary engineers in the design and implementation of innovative projects throughout East Africa.
As a Structural Engineer and a Construction Project Manager for the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture project, Rosie helped to lead the team through design and construction using earth and wood, which involves interpreting local and international building codes to design structures that would be seismically appropriate for the region. She is now contributing to research which will inform standards for adobe block (mud brick) construction, commonly used in rural areas. She also sits on the Rwanda Standards Board Technical Committee for Civil Engineering and Building Materials.
Rwanda has experienced three earthquakes in the past 60 years. While the University of Rwanda started teaching seismic design three years ago, there still remains a lack of expertise across the country, particularly for smaller projects. As Structural lead and a Construction Project Manager for Ruhehe Primary School, Rosie led the engineering team to deliver an earthquake resistant design. The school was a design-build project of the African Design Centre for which she also ran a structural engineering lecture series as part of MASS's curriculum.
Rosie has led efforts to recruit new members of the engineering team to build MASS's capacity to design and implement innovative, mission-driven projects. Her team has grown rapidly over the last two years, from five to 24 engineers, with 70% of the team hailing from Rwanda or East Africa. She has also set up an internal professional development system.
Before joining MASS, Rosie worked for Atkins for five years designing infrastructure, including working in India for eight months as a design coordinator on the Doha Metro.
Sophie Harker
Sophie Harker is a Senior Aerodynamicist for BAE Systems and is one of the youngest engineers to have achieved Chartered Engineer status at just 25 years old. She works at the forefront of aerospace technology, developing advanced designs and concepts for new generation fast jets and aircraft that operate in space as well as inside the atmosphere. She has contributed directly to BAE System's hypersonic capabilities, including applying technologies from the first hybrid air-breathing rocket engine system (SABRETM) being developed by Reaction Engines Ltd, which could revolutionise travel from the atmosphere into space. One day she hopes to go into space herself as an astronaut.
What makes Sophie a truly exceptional and talented engineer is her creative and innovative approach. Her work on hypersonic air vehicles includes building the necessary business cases and defining the product philosophy at each stage of development. She has also led a process transformation programme within the avionics department at BAE Systems, which involved engaging with 400 other engineers to streamline the avionics design process.
Sophie is an active STEM role model and ambassador and features in the Academy's flagship This Is Engineering campaign to promote careers in engineering. She has also founded a not-for-profit organisation which reaches out into schools using video call technology to connect schools to STEM ambassadors, making it easier for schools to benefit from outreach. In December, the Institution of Engineering and Technology announced Sophie as the 2018 Young Woman Engineer of the Year.
Dr Giorgia Longobardi
Dr Giorgia Longobardi is founder and CEO of Cambridge GaN Devices Ltd (CGD), a start-up developing highly efficient power electronics that could offer major energy savings in applications ranging from power supplies for consumer electronics to LED drives, data centres and wireless chargers.
Giorgia's work is focused on gallium nitride (GaN) technologies, including sensors and system solutions for efficient power management. She was awarded a prestigious Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) at Gonville & Caius College Cambridge and spun her company out of the engineering department at Cambridge University after completing her PhD in collaboration with NXP Semiconductors and soon after receiving an EPSRC follow on impact acceleration fund and winning the first prize of Cambridge Enterprise business plan competition. After spending a year in Japan sponsored by a JSPS fellowship, Giorgia led a successful seed fund investment round for her company, which now employs ten people, and her drive for innovation has led to 12 patent applications. CGD was recently selected as one of the best deep-tech startups to watch by the School of Entrepreneurship & Innovation in Turin.
Beyond her technical achievements, Dr Longobardi is extremely passionate about promoting STEM subjects to the next generation, especially women. She has been a STEM ambassador engaging with school students all around the world and in Italy, UK, and Japan.
Dr Áine Ní Bhreasail
Dr Áine Ní Bhreasail is a chartered civil engineer specialising in geotechnics, currently working for Arup. Her expertise in soil movement, together with her analytical approach and strong communication skills, have enabled her to make a real impact on the industry and to help develop more resilient infrastructure.
During her PhD research, Áine captured the first images of cracks in frozen soil that allow water to seep in and freeze, wedging the soil apart, which can lead to destructive heaving. This permafrost thaw not only damages buildings and infrastructure but also releases greenhouse gases, contributing to climate change. Her ground-breaking findings also help to explain how materials as diverse as lava, ice-cream and bone implants behave in real-life situations.
Áine's work has brought together Highways England and Network Rail for their first joint research project, investigating how hyperspectral imaging could monitor invasive vegetation, determine soil moisture and measure deterioration of assets – reducing maintenance costs and keeping roads and railway lines open.
Áine is a member of the Mayor of London's Infrastructure Young Professionals Panel, which advises the Greater London Authority. She has provided advice to the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee and authored a chapter of the World Bank's Urban Rail Development Guidebook on Resilience to Climate and Natural Hazards.
Áine dedicates time to mentoring with the Social Mobility Foundation, helping young people from low-income backgrounds explore careers in engineering, and she also devised the current work experience programme for Arup's Infrastructure London team. In 2017, she was named one of the Top 50 Women in Engineering by the Women's Engineering Society.
Dr Mariia Sorokina
Dr Mariia Sorokina is a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow, currently developing next-generation hardware enabling faster and more energy-efficient artificial intelligence (AI) computing. She has established a new, emerging research field – fibre-laser based neuromorphic engineering – that is critical for the development of data-hungry AI applications.
Early in her career Mariia showed a strong aptitude for engineering research related to signal processing. She has developed a novel type of signal shaping that breaks the established paradigm, for the first time enabling fibre-optic communication faster than was previously thought possible. This discovery is seen as crucial for the development of future high-capacity broadband systems to meet the ever-increasing demand for data.
Mariia is passionate about communicating the benefits of engineering and inspiring new people to join the profession. She helped to organise Lightfest2015, which attracted over 12,500 people to visit Birmingham library for demonstrations, workshops and public lectures on the science of light.
She is also working with industry to get companies involved in Birmingham City Council's Big Datа Corridor as part of the European Structural Investment Fund.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Finance & economics | Energy trading
Weather patterns
How to forecast the forecasters
Apr 19th 2007 |
IF YOU think the weather is unpredictable, consider the weathermen. They are constantly revising their forecasts, causing inconvenience not only to those pondering whether or not to take an umbrella, but also to commodity traders placing bets on how much gas and electricity will be needed for heating. When their predictions turn from cold snap to heat wave, say, it can play havoc with the forward price of gas.
WSI, a firm that owns the Weather Channel and sells forecasts of its own to airlines and other weather-dependent companies, has been grappling with this problem. Its solution is a new product called MarketFirst, a sort of forecast of the forecast. Every day, an hour before America's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases its updated forecast for the world's weather, WSI issues its own prediction of how the new bulletin will differ from the previous one. It does the same for the EU's official forecast. A year's subscription to MarketFirst, launched last November, costs $90,000, and WSI says it has already signed up a dozen customers.
MarketFirst would be of little use if it was as unreliable about the forecasts as the forecasts are about the weather. But WSI claims it is right 70% of the time. The trick, says Ira Scharf, who is in charge of selling it, is to understand the algorithms that underpin the government's forecasts. WSI has been studying them for years to improve its own forecasts and has detected the subtle biases in both the American and European models. European weathermen, for example, underestimate temperatures for western America in spring and autumn. American ones are prone to predict chillier temperatures than they should for the period from 11 to 15 days from the time of the forecast.
The more widespread MarketFirst becomes, the less useful it will be to its subscribers, Mr Scharf concedes, since markets would begin to move in response to its release, rather than to the forecasts it anticipates. So WSI considered various methods of selling it, including releasing it earlier to certain customers for a higher fee. Another option would be to sell a forecast of the forecast of the forecast. So far, Mr Scharf says, traders do not see the need. But in the long run it is as inevitable as changes in the weather.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline "Weather patterns"
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Codrington College, Barbados -- formerly operated by Anglicans with slave labor | Wikipedia
Caribbean Slavery Reparations Urged for Church of England
By Mark Michael
The Church of England should play a role in discussions about reparations for Caribbean slavery, says Sir Hilary Beckles, chair of the Reparations Commission of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a cooperative league of fifteen West Indian nations. Beckles, the vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies and a noted historian of Caribbean slavery, called for the church to participate in an upcoming reparations summit at a press conference on July 6, according to reports by the Nassau, Bahamas-based Tribune.
Sir Hilary Beckels | University of the West Indies
"It is also the Church of England's time to join civil society's conversation about reparations for development," Beckles said, noting that the church's General Synod approved a resolution apologizing to descendants of victims of the slave trade in 2006.
He added, "Apologies are not enough. Apologies are precursors for reparations. Apologies are signals of an intent to participate in a reparatory process. Apologies are stage one of an effort that says, 'we acknowledge the harm that we have caused and we are prepared to enter phase two which is a discussion and a negotiation about how to repair that harm and suffering that continues to be the legacy in the Caribbean today."
Beckles said that Caribbean people continue to suffer economic deprivation and poor health as a direct result of the injustices of slavery. He argues that European institutions that created and benefitted from the slave system must play a role in addressing these issues.
"Britain and Europe chose to walk away from this mess that they have created," Beckles said. "They have left it entirely to the democratic leadership of Caribbean governments and civil society. This was a deliberate and strategic effort, to walk away and refuse to take the responsibility for the legacies of slavery and colonization. The model which was used by Britain at the moment of the ending of colonization, was that Britain should exit colonization and its legacies on the cheap. That they should exit without responsibility; that they should walk away and not look back."
Beckles said that CARICOM's Commission on Reparations plans a three-day summit with representatives of European governments and private sector institutions "to discuss how to honor this debt owed to the Caribbean at this moment in history." The Commission on Reparations has outlined a ten-point Reparations Plan for the region, which includes a series of initiatives focused on issues like indigenous community development, public health, literacy, psychological rehabilitation, and the cancellation of debts owed by Caribbean nations.
Responding to worldwide protests against racial injustice, a Church of England spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph in late June, "While we recognize the leading role clergy and active members of the Church of England played in securing the abolition of slavery, it is a source of shame that others within the church actively perpetrated slavery and profited from it." A similar statement was issued by the Bank of England.
Beckles referenced these comments in his remarks, saying "we have heard of late of major private sector that have emerged out of slavery, that emerged out of colonization that were enriched by the crimes against humanity with issues and comments of regret. The major institutions in the city of London, for example, have all made their statements. Time has come now to move to that summit with these major institutions to discuss their contribution to a development plan for the Caribbean."
In 1710, Christopher Codrington, a prominent Barbadian planter, bequeathed two large sugar estates to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Church of England's primary mission agency for North and Central America. The plantations were operated by managers on the church's behalf, and some have suggested that they were operated on a "work to death" policy, as four of every ten slaves bought by the plantations in 1740 died within three years of arrival. Beckles noted that Codrington plantation slaves were branded on the chest with the word, "Society," a practice continued for a decade after church ownership to discourage runaways.
Codrington College, the Anglican seminary for the West Indies, was built on one of the plantations, and plantation proceeds were used to finance its operations. Codrington's original request that a portion of his bequest be used to educate Barbados' enslaved population was never honored. Beilby Porteus, a late eighteenth Bishop of London who had himself grown up on a Virginia plantation, criticized conditions on the Codrington plantations in a famous 1783 charity sermon that played a crucial role in gaining public support for abolition. The Church of England relinquished its slaves only after slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire in 1833 and was paid £8,823. 8s. 9d restitution by the Crown for 411 slaves owned in the Caribbean at the time of abolition.
CARICOMChurch of EnglandCodrington CollegeHilary Becklesreparations
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Established in 2014, the American Kratom Association is committed to restoring full consumer access to kratom and to preserve and protect the freedom of consumers in the United States to make their own choices on their well-being and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The American Kratom Association is a Virginia-registered non-profit corporation in good standing, operating as a 501 c(4). Through the services of its Executive Director and a 3rd-party CPA, the AKA ensures its compliance with both State and Federal regulations through timely internal financial reconciliations and strict Board-adopted conduct policies. We are committed to bringing confidence for each donor that their money is being spent wisely.
It is only through the generosity of individual donors and volunteers that we have been able to fight anti-kratom legislation across the United States.
The American Kratom Association was formed in 2014 and officially launched in 2015, to protect the right of all Americans to use the natural botanical Kratom for improved health and well-being. Kratom (Mitragyna speciosa) is a natural analgesic which has been used for hundreds of years to safely alleviate pain, combat fatigue and help with the effects of anxiety and depression. Unfortunately, the spread of misinformation, both scientific and anecdotal, about Kratom has created a challenging regulatory environment. The American Kratom Association was formed to organize and represent a community of responsible consumers, provide the general public with clarification surrounding matters of health and wellness where Kratom could play an important role, educate lawmakers and regulators and support scientific research efforts.
On behalf of the growing numbers of Kratom users, including doctors, lawyers, teachers and law enforcement officers, The American Kratom Association works to help protect their ability to use Kratom for the purposes of improved health and well being.
The American Kratom Association has 5 main goals:
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