BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) – The European Union insisted on Friday that Britain not change trading rules in Northern Ireland on its own and said it would continue legal action against unilateral British action in the province for as long as necessary.
European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic hosted UK negotiator David Frost for talks on Thursday evening and said that only agreements by joint bodies established by the Brexit divorce deal could provide stability in Northern Ireland.
The British-ruled province is in the EU single market for goods to ensure an open border with EU member Ireland and so requires checks on goods coming from other parts of the United Kingdom.
Britain in March unilaterally extended a grace period on certain checks to minimise supply disruption, a move Brussels said breached the Brexit divorce deal known as the Withdrawal Agreement and the specific protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.
Sefcovic said in a statement on Friday there was no space for unilateral action. He said both sides had to agreed how to comply fully with the protocol, including “clear end-points, deadlines, milestones and the means to measure progress”.
Frost said the British government was committed to working through joint bodies and that all solutions had to respect the Good Friday peace agreement “in all its dimensions” and to ensure minimal disruption to everyday lives in Northern Ireland.
Both agreed that Thursday’s discussion took place in a constructive atmosphere, that talks needed to intensify and that they would jointly engage with business groups, civil society and others in Northern Ireland.
Frost said that some “positive momentum” had been established.
“But a number of difficult issues remained and it was important to continue to discuss them,” the British government said in a statement.
Reporting by Michael Holden and Elizabeth Piper in London, Philip Blenkinsop and Jan Strupczewski in Brussels
The non-profit organization “Fondazione Rava” provides emergency aid for those in most need, but also promotes long-term programs to support poor people in building livelihoods.
Father Richard Frechette, a priest and medical doctor whose work in Haiti is supported by the Foundation, spoke with Vatican News about the effects of the pandemic in one of the poorest countries in the world.
“The main way that coronavirus has negatively impacted the condition of people at least in our experience in Haiti, is because of the collapsed global economy,” said Father Frechette.
He highlighted the fact that funds received from abroad are not “charity”. He pointed out that they are more like subsidies used by the organisation “to do something that’s really good and noble for the people, which is the creation of work, or different kinds of small businesses which help people to live.”
Noting the “enormous” decrease in donations due to the global economic collapse, Fr Frechette said, “It’s our experience — our experience is not small, and I’m sure it’s compounded across the country — but this has been [the cause of] the increase in poverty and hardship in living because of Covid-19 around the world, which has caused the collapse of the global economy.”
The European Parliament’s committees on relations with Britain on Thursday (15 April) voted overwhelmingly in favour of the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement, clearing the path to its final ratification.
They had suspended voting in March in protest over British changes to trading arrangements in Northern Ireland, which Brussels says breach the terms of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.
The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January after years of tortuous negotiations over their future relations but many details remain unclear, leading to acrimony.
The EU’s foreign affairs and trade committees backed the trade and cooperation agreement struck in December by 108 votes to one, with four abstentions, the parliament said in a statement.
The full chamber must still give its approval and, while it is clear the deal would receive majority backing, it is not certain that lawmakers will vote.
Parliament faces an end-April deadline but has said it wants to see Britain move on implementing the Northern Ireland protocol.
If there is no vote this month and provisional application of the agreement is not extended, then the trade deal would cease to apply, leaving Britain and the European Union to trade on World Trade Organization terms with tariffs and quotas.
Christophe Hansen, a lead lawmaker on post-Brexit ties, said Britain would not agree to another extension, meaning the end of April was a potential cliff edge. But he supported the agreement on Thursday.
“Plunging our companies into renewed uncertainty would be irresponsible and definitely in nobody’s interest,” he said.
Parliamentary leaders compromised this week by allowing the committee vote and could still decide to put the trade deal before the full chamber in its 26-29 April session.
The Brexit impact on Northern Ireland has helped fuel the worst violence in the province for years, but EU-UK rhetoric has dialled down and technical experts from both sides have sought to overcome differences.
British negotiator David Frost will meet European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic on Thursday evening. The Commission said the meeting was designed as a stock-taking exercise and to provide a steer for future talks.
ING to separate Board roles for operations and technology; Ron van Kemenade appointed chief technology officer, chief operations officer Roel Louwhoff to leave ING – Book Publishing Industry Today – EIN Presswire
The Tennessee Statehouse needs to stop attempting to foist Christianity upon the residents of the state and start working to address their real needs.
Annie Laurie Gaylor | Guest Columnist
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An inside look at the construction of the new Nashville SC stadium
Nashville SC hosted an on-site tour for media members to tour the stadium and the construction progression.
Mike Fant, Nashville Tennessean
Annie Laurie Gaylor is the co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation
A proposal to anoint the Bible as Tennessee’s official state book is not only unconstitutional, it is also an affront to true religious freedom.
A resolution to do so passed the House on April 1 and has been sent to the Senate floor. The Tennessee Constitution specifically guarantees “that no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious establishment or mode of worship.”
What could show more preference than having a state legislature designate one religion’s so-called holy book as its official book?
In 2016, former Gov. Bill Haslam properly vetoed a similar bill after Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery noted that it violates both the federal and state constitutions.
Imagine the uproar and consternation that would attend the introduction of a bill to designate the Quran as Tennessee’s official state book. It is equally contrary to our nation’s religious freedom to single out the Christian Bible.
Under the First Amendment, citizens are free to choose any “holy book” they like, or none at all — the choice of 26% of the American population that is currently religiously unaffiliated.
The United States was not founded on the Bible or any “holy book,” but on our secular and godless Constitution, which grants sovereignty not to a deity or a “holy book” but to “We the People.”
The founders were well aware of the horrors of the Inquisition, the Crusades, the Thirty Years War, the witch hunts, and the persecution of various faiths in the individual colonies. That’s why they wanted no part of religion in government.
This bill is fiscally irresponsible, as it would almost certainly result in a preventable lawsuit that would cost state taxpayers dearly.
The General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee in 2016 estimated such a lawsuit could have cost Tennessee more than $100,000.
Religious faith is a matter for private conscience, not state endorsement.
In his decision upholding the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s challenge of Christian indoctrination in Rhea County public schools in Tennessee, Chief U.S. District Judge R. Allan Edgar of Chattanooga wisely noted, “A state-created orthodoxy puts at grave risk freedom of belief and conscience, which is the sole assurance that religious faith is real, not imposed.”
In a pandemic, with so much at stake, the Tennessee Statehouse needs to stop attempting to foist Christianity upon the residents of the state and start working to address their real needs.
Annie Laurie Gaylor is the co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national nonprofit with more than 35,000 members and several chapters all across the country, including hundreds of members and a chapter in Tennessee. FFRF protects the constitutional separation between state and church and educates about nontheism.
Richard Wright, in the winter of 1941, was the most successful Black author in America. Only 14 years earlier, he had made the Great Migration, moving from Memphis to Chicago. He had enrolled in the 10th grade in Hyde Park but quickly dropped out and went to work. He sorted mail for the Chicago post office, and he cared for medical-research animals at what was then Michael Reese Hospital, and he sold insurance policies door-to-door on the South Side. Also, he started to write books, and in 1940, his novel “Native Son” was a sensation. As one critic famously presumed, after reading the novel’s blunt force approach to race and poverty, American culture would be changed forever. Wright was a star, and the bestselling author at Harper & Brothers (later HarperCollins), the fabled New York publishing house that claimed the “Little House on the Prairie” series and Thornton Wilder, among others.
By Matthew Sparkes – A European Union plan to regulate artificial intelligence could see companies that break proposed rules on mass surveillance and discrimination fined millions of euros. Draft legislation, leaked ahead of its official release later this month, suggests the EU is attempting to find a “third way” on AI regulation, between the free market US and authoritarian China.
As presently worded, the rules would ban AI designed to manipulate people “to their detriment”, carry out indiscriminate surveillance or calculate “social scores”. Much of the language is vague enough that the regulations could cover the entire advertising industry or nothing at all. In any case, the military and any agency ensuring public security are exempt.
Some “high risk” activities would be allowed, subject to strict controls, including measures to prevent bringing racial, gender or age bias into AI systems. As possible targets, the legislation mentions systems to automate job recruitment, assigning places at schools, colleges or universities, measuring credit scores or deciding the outcome of visa applications. Companies in breach could be fined up to €20 million, or 4 per cent of global turnover.
In a way, the news is no surprise, as the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, promised to urgently bring in AI legislation when she was elected in 2019. But Lilian Edwards at Newcastle University, UK, says the draft laws will concern the tech industry. “I applaud the ambition, but you can’t imagine it getting through in this state,” she says.
Edwards compares the approach to the way EU regulates consumer products, which must meet certain requirements to be imported. “That’s much harder to do with AI as it’s not always a simple product,” she says. “You’re heading inexorably towards a trade war with Silicon Valley or weak enforcement.”
China and the US have already made huge strides in implementing AI in a range of industries, including national security and law enforcement. In China, the everyday movement of citizens in many cities is monitored by facial recognition and there are many public and private trials of a “social credit score” that will ultimately be rolled out nationwide. These scores can be lowered by infractions such as playing computer games for too long or crossing the street on a red pedestrian light and can be raised by donating to charity. If your score drops too low, you may be denied rail travel or shamed in online lists.
Meanwhile, in the US, where many tech giants are based, a light-touch, free-market approach to regulation was encouraged by Donald Trump’s administration, while current president Joe Biden has taken no firm public stance.
Daniel Leufer at Access Now, one of the groups that has previously advised the EU on AI, says Europe has long had a strategy to take a third way between the US and China on tech regulation, and says the draft legislation has promise.
But he warns that there are “big red flags” around some elements of the draft legislation, such as the creation of a European Artificial Intelligence Board. “They will have a huge amount of influence over what gets added to or taken out of the high-risk list and the prohibitions list,” he says, meaning exactly who sits on the board will be key.
The EU has had previous success in influencing global tech policy. Its General Data Protection Regulation, introduced in 2018, inspired similar laws in non-EU countries and in California, the home of Silicon Valley. In response, however, some US firms have simply blocked EU customers from accessing their services.
It remains to be seen whether the UK will follow the EU in regulating AI now that it has left the bloc. The UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy told New Scientist that the government has formed an independent panel called the Regulatory Horizons Council to advise on what regulation is needed to react to new technology such as AI.
The European Parliament’s foreign affairs and trade committees approved the EU-U.K. trade deal Thursday, moving the post-Brexit agreement a step closer to full ratification in the chamber.
The trade deal passed with an overwhelming 108 votes in favor, one vote against and four abstentions.
Earlier this week, leading MEPs once again refused to set a date to fully ratify the deal in plenary, saying they would wait until London gives reassurances it will apply the agreement. Political group leaders had decided in March to postpone their ratification vote after the U.K. unveiled plans to unilaterally extend grace periods on post-Brexit customs checks at Northern Ireland’s ports for at least six months.
“All progress could be lost, if the UK continues to unilaterally breach the Withdrawal Agreement and the Protocol on Northern Ireland,” said MEP Andreas Schieder, the rapporteur on the file for the foreign affairs committee, from the center-left Socialists & Democrats group. “We look forward to a workable plan on the implementation of the protocol.”
Both sides have been applying the deal provisionally since January 1, pending EU parliamentary scrutiny and ratification. But the temporary application period will lapse on April 30, meaning the European Parliament would have to greenlight the deal this month or risk causing major disruption in EU-U.K. trade relations and cooperation.
“No responsible politician will be able to justify [withholding ratification] after April because if we don’t ratify it, we will be back to zero, and the agreement will not be effective anymore, so this would damage majorly both economies,” said Christophe Hansen from the center-right EPP group, rapporteur for the trade committee.
Key MEPs are set meet on April 22 and to potentially schedule the plenary vote.
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??: UN experts express deep regret at Japan’s decision to release contaminated water from the destroyed #Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean, noting the potential threats to human health and the environment from the discharge of this radioactive water. https://t.co/moJYvnK2IZpic.twitter.com/VwKgVOHD2F
Given the warnings from environmentalists and some governments that the discharge would affect many people as well as the environment at large, the experts called the Government’s decision “very concerning”.
It comes after years of discussions with communities – including the fishing sector, which was already severely hit by the 2011 disaster – environmental NGOs, neighbouring countries and civil society.
“The decision is particularly disappointing as experts believe alternative solutions to the problem are available”, they said.
Fallout
Noting that the water may contain quantities of radioactive carbon-14, as well as other radioactive isotopes, the independent experts raised their concerns with the Japanese Government that discharging radioactive water to the Pacific Ocean threatens the health of people and planet.
Meanwhile, in reply to expert concerns, the Japanese Government has suggested that the treated water stored in the tanks was not contaminated.
However, the experts upheld that the ALPS water processing technology had failed to completely remove radioactive concentrations in most of the contaminated water stored in tanks at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
“A first application ALPS failed to clean the water below regulatory levels and there are no guarantees that a second treatment will succeed”, they said, adding that the technology did not remove radioactive tritium or carbon-14.
Isotope concerns
While Japan said that the tritium levels are very low and do not pose a threat to human health, scientists warn that in the water, the isotope organically binds to other molecules, moving up the food chain affecting plants and fish and humans.
Moreover, they say the radioactive hazards of tritium have been underestimated and could pose risks to humans and the environment for over 100 years.
“We remind Japan of its international obligations to prevent exposure to hazardous substances, to conduct environmental impact assessments of the risks that the discharge of water may have, to prevent transboundary environmental harms, and to protect the marine environment”, the experts concluded.
Special Rapporteurs and independent experts are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not paid for their work.
