General secretary of TUC calls Reform proposal ‘a smokescreen for slashing women’s rights’
A law proposed by Nigel Farage to “strengthen women’s rights” could cost female workers money by removing equal pay for work of equal value, unions have said.
A proposal, made by Reform UK days before the Makerfield byelection, to introduce a “women and motherhood protection act” that it says will restore equality before the law has been described as “shameless and deceptive”.
Continue reading...Young adults and teens are being recruited through apps like Telegram and paid to carry out attacks, officials say
Police investigators in Toronto have said that dozens of shootings – including one at the US consulate in March – are linked to a “multilayered” gun-for-hire network that is also responsible for attacks on synagogues around Canada’s largest city.
Toronto’s police chief, Myron Demkiw, told reporters on Tuesday that young adults and teenagers are being recruited through encrypted messaging apps such as Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp by “bad actors” and paid by the networks to carry out the attacks. Shooters are required to film their attacks in order to get paid.
Continue reading...Helen Cammock says her comments blaming wartime leader for Bengal famine were intended to create ‘dialogue’
A Turner prize-winning artist accused of telling a “barefaced lie” about Winston Churchill in a video piece installed at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has defended her work, saying it was intended to create a “dialogue” about figures in the gallery’s collection.
Helen Cammock’s 40-minute moving image piece called Persistence has been at the centre of a row about the role Churchill played in the Bengal famine of 1943.
Continue reading...Move to ChapsVision is to avoid ‘strategic dependencies’, says PM amid concern about reliance on US-controlled tools
France’s domestic intelligence service is to ditch AI data tools from the US tech company Palantir in favour of a domestic provider in an effort to avoid “strategic dependency”, the prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, has said.
“We must use our own AI models; we cannot accept new strategic dependencies in the digital sphere,” Lecornu posted on social media. “We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools.”
Continue reading...Ex-defence secretary John Healey and ex-defence minister Al Carns have given resignation statements to MPs
Speaking to reporters at the G7, Keir Starmer also defended the defence investment plan (DIP) draft that led to John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary last week. Starmer confirmed that Dan Jarvis, the new defence secretary, is getting some input before the publication of the DIP in its final version.
Starmer said:
The position on investment in defence is firstly that we increased last year defence spending from 2.3% to 2.6%, that’s the biggest increase since the 1980s, and that means £270bn will be spent this parliament on defence.
On top of that [the] defence investment plan which obviously gives us capability for the future. We will put even more money in relation to that. I’ve been really clear that’s required difficult decisions, I have taken the decision to reallocate money from other departments.
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