Latest news with #Lunn
BBC News
22-04-2025
- General
- BBC News
Spelthorne litter pickers get King's Award for Voluntary Service
A Surrey litter picking group has been presented with an "MBE for charities" to mark its work to keep the community Litter Pickers was formed in 2020 with the aim of keeping the borough clean through volunteer events across the group has now been honoured with the King's Award for Voluntary Service, the highest award given to volunteer groups in the Lunn, co-founder of the group, said receiving the award was "really special" and had spurred them on to continue their work. She added: "The group has really made a difference. I think everyone is really delighted that we have been recognised even though what we do is not glamorous."Receiving the award was absolutely amazing. It was a really big achievement and everybody feels it." Formed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ms Lunn added that the group now includes volunteers ranging from five years old to group carries out a monthly litter pick across the area as well as encouraging volunteers to do their own work in their own added that, since forming, the group has led efforts to clean up Spelthorne, including getting a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO) for the area to tackle littered nitrous oxide pickers from the group collected the award at a ceremony at Spelthorne Borough Council on Tuesday, 15 award was first created in 2002 as the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service to celebrate the Golden King's Award is equivalent to an MBE for Majesty's Lord Lieutenant of Surrey Michael More-Molyneux, who presented the award, said: "It was a pleasure to present this award to the Spelthorne Litter Pickers."They carry out fantastic voluntary work in Spelthorne and fully deserve our thanks and the recognition that comes with this award."
BBC News
20-04-2025
- General
- BBC News
Bradford Cathedral loom to weave tapestry of city's story
Visitors to Bradford Cathedral are to get the chance to use a loom to help weave a tapestry celebrating the city's textile tapestry will be created for the Weaving Stories project, which is part of Bradford 2025 UK City of "regardless of skill or experience" could have a go on the loom and there would be guidance in several languages about how to weave, a spokesperson for the project added that it was "about more than preserving history, it's about bringing people together". The Rev Canon Ned Lunn, canon for intercultural mission and the arts at Bradford Cathedral, said it was "really important as this year's UK City of Culture to place ourselves as the storytellers of the city, to be able to remind people of the length of the story, not just the industry."One of the major things of the UK's City of Culture is to look for legacy, and we are wanting to create a legacy piece, a tapestry which is made by the people of Bradford for the people of Bradford." The more intricate parts of the tapestry were expected to be completed by a small group of volunteers with experience in embroidery, stitching or textile work, the spokesperson for the project members of the West Riding Stone Carving Association would create stone weights to help support the completed tapestry, each carved with words and phrases taken from the stories which had been project would be run in partnership with Haworth Scouring and the Bradford Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, who had sourced and spun the wool that would be used to create the tapestry, the spokesperson individuals and community groups were also invited to contribute to a "sound tapestry" which would form a collection of recorded voices and Canon Lunn said: "By taking part, you will help safeguard an at-risk heritage craft, learn new skills, and build lasting connections with one of Bradford's most significant cultural spaces."The tapestry project is expected to get under way at Bradford Cathedral on 10 May, and the finished piece will go on display there next February. Listen to highlights from West Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
BBC News
15-04-2025
- General
- BBC News
Rotherham 'mum to many' celebrates 50 years of fostering
A dedicated foster carer has marked a milestone after caring for more than 200 children over the past five Lunn, 80, who was recognised for her services to fostering with an MBE in 2019, was celebrated at a special event held at Rotherham Town Lunn, from North Anston, said she had been taken to the event to celebrate "under false pretences" and could not believe it was organised in her honour."It was a complete and utter shock," she told the BBC, "I think if anyone had pushed me, I would have dropped to the floor." Mrs Lunn was told the event last week was an award ceremony for a friend but spotted friends, family and foster children from the past and present when she arrived."I just didn't know what to do, my legs went to jelly," she said."I get quite emotional when I think about it. It was an absolutely fantastic afternoon." 'Amazing' Mrs Lunn was presented with a gift by Rotherham's mayor on behalf of the borough and many shared stories of how "Auntie Christine" had shaped their lives, the Local Democracy Reporting Service those was Jane, the first child Mrs Lunn fostered, who spent six weeks in her care as a said: "She's just amazing with what she does. "I'm a parent-of-three and it's hard work so to keep on doing what she's doing at her age, it's the next level."Mrs Lunn's fostering journey began with her late husband Peter in 1975, when their daughter was just date, Mrs Lunn has looked after more than 250 children, and said it was "seeing the happy outcomes" that kept her going. Rotherham councillor Victoria Cusworth said: "There is nothing I can say that will come close to demonstrating the gratitude we owe Christine for her dedication to children and young people, but the world is simply a much better place because of her."Mrs Lunn, who received the BBC's Make a Difference Carers Award in 2023, said she was still not ready to retire."I feel so lucky to have been able to carry on this long," she said."I just wish I was 20 years younger and I had 20 years to do."Listen to highlights from South Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, catch up with the latest episode of Look North.
Yahoo
12-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How one startup coordinates your payments
This story was originally published on Payments Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Payments Dive newsletter. Payment orchestration firm Gr4vy was founded in 2021 amid the global pandemic, with merchants around the world scrambling to adjust to sales that had rushed fully online, virtually overnight. In this rapid migration to digital and massive new volume online, many retailers found their payment systems lacking, Gr4vy's founder and chief executive, John Lunn, said in an April 3 interview. The company's cloud-based platform supports some 400 alternative payment types, along with anti-fraud and other software tools, he said. Gr4vy (pronounced like the sauce) has about 50 employees in 14 countries, all of whom work remotely. The company, which calls Silicon Valley home, has raised about $27 million and is funding its growth through sales, aiming to avoid further fundraising. Gr4vy isn't profitable yet, Lunn said, declining to specify when the company may achieve that. Gr4y's orchestration tools are used for commerce globally across a variety of industries, including at Grammarly, the San Francisco-based software company; Event Cinemas, an Australian movie theater chain; Corendon Airlines, a Turkish leisure carrier; Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that oversees Wikipedia; and Wisconsin-based Trek Bicycle, which adopted Gr4vy's platform last month. A U.K. native and former PayPal Holdings executive, Lunn was previously at payments service provider CyberSource, which Visa acquired in 2010. He also worked on launching PayPal's venture capital investment operation and has advised companies in the payments industry. Lest you're curious why Gr4vy carries a '4' in its name, in lieu of the vowel, the reason concerns a cash-strapped startup's need to conserve funds. 'The domain gravy (dot-com) with an A in it was $1.5 million. The domain gravy with a four in it was $5,' Lunn said. Editor's note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. JOHN LUNN: We're a technology layer that sits between mainly retailers and the rest of the financial ecosystem when it comes to payments. There's lots of payment service providers (PSPs) out there, anti-fraud companies and payment choices. The traditional way for a retailer to interact is to connect to one or many of those and then manage all of those connections and repayments they need to go through. They usually will build a payments team that manages those connections, manages that technology and that software. What Gr4vy does is provide a piece of technology that steps in and gives you all of that functionality, so your head of payments and your team can essentially move faster because they're not having to build and maintain everything with custom code. They didn't have a choice before. It's very similar to other stories in technology. You probably connected to one PSP to start with, when you were small, and then as you grew, you added more functionality. So maybe you connected to something like a Stripe, and then six months later you go and add PayPal. Then you maybe add a firm, and then you go global, and you need to do that. Traditionally, companies have grown organically by just adding more and more of those connectors. And accordingly, their payments teams have got bigger and bigger, and you've got some companies now that (have) nothing to do with payments, but have 300 plus payment people, payment teams, because they had to grow this group organically from that setup. As I spent a lot of time talking to retailers, and I realized you're all building the same thing, you're all building independently with custom code. This makes no sense. Let's build a tool that does this. We work with them as partners. We'll sit above the PSP or gateways. The gateways themselves will be the ones who are connecting to the acquirers, and the acquirers will be connecting to the Visas or Mastercards. So, we're higher in the process when it comes to motion integration. As we've grown, those schemes have become increasingly more interested in Gr4vy because they now say, 'Look, I could create this new product, and I could go to every PSP in the world and launch it, or I could go to Gr4vy, which is connected up to most of those PSPs, and launch it, and then I get access to those merchants and all those PSPs.' Most U.S. retailers are going to need to process cards, right? They need to accept cards because that's what consumers want. We will make it easier for them to integrate other payment types as well. Things like open banking in Europe or pay-by-bank in Australia. We support over 400 different alternative payment types. So, yes, we make it easy as a merchant to add other things, to give the consumer choice, perhaps to give them pricing advantages. But we can't solve the problem of how much acquirers are charging for Visa or Mastercard transactions or Amex or whoever else, because that's between them and their acquirers. We don't touch the money. We're a technology event. Usually, when a merchant comes to talk to us, it's because something has happened with their status quo that makes them reconsider what they've got. When we started Gr4vy four years ago, I talked to a venture capitalist who said, 'In North America, most retailers are single acquirer. They have one acquirer. That's it. Why would anyone need Gr4vy?' If you saw the stats that came out recently, 60% of North American merchants are considering having a second acquirer right now. So, we've seen that trend change very rapidly over the last few years, where just having one source for everything is changing now. Merchants have realized having two not only increases your chance to get a successful authorization, it gives you increased negotiating power, gives you the ability to optimize, etc, etc. What we've seen is that fundamental change among North America merchants, where they've realized that having more than one is a good thing, and it gives us more choice and more power. This is a huge market, in my view. I was at MAG (Merchant Advisory Group) conference earlier in the year and on stage a very senior member of MAG said that every merchant here will be using orchestration in the next five years. I think the market is ginormous. I think you have specialization in orchestration. I don't think there's going to be one winner. I think you're going to end up with a similar situation you have today, where there's some orchestrations that specialize in SMB (small-medium business). There's orchestrators that specialize in enterprise-large merchant. There's going to be some specific to travel and airlines, some are specific to gambling and gaming. I mean, it's a huge, huge market, but yeah, we have competition. We have people doing similar things in different ways. But my largest source of competition is the in-house team who wants to keep on doing it the way they did it. That's my biggest competition. A lot of people call themselves orchestrators. The term has been slightly co-opted in that it got very trendy, very quickly. A lot of companies decided they did payment orchestration when they weren't really doing anything different than they've ever done in the past. The difference between us, where we do pure-play payment orchestration, is what we do in infrastructure — give control to the merchant — is very different than a gateway that has connections to multiple payment types. They'll call themselves an orchestrator because they can do Visa, Mastercard, Affirm and PayPal. That, in our view, is not orchestration. That is a gateway. But it sounds better in your marketing message to call yourself an orchestrator. There's a small (group), maybe 11 or 12 globally, payment orchestrators that do what we would call pure-play payment orchestration. We have got two main parts of the business. We have very, very large retailers, merchants, and that's kind of where we sit. We work with the larger end of the industry that have the harder problems to solve, and we've designed a platform to be very flexible and work for that particular segment. So, we would see ourselves sitting in the large, midsize enterprise space. The second side of our business is we actually serve platforms who serve merchants. We're working with other payment service providers. We're working with (independent sales organizations), we're working with software platforms and people who want to get into the payment business to provide them with infrastructure so they can do that. At the moment, it's early days, but I think the chances of us making it to IPO and not being acquired are pretty slim, because we're becoming increasingly that sort of important piece on the chess board. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
01-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Top safety official urges response to 2017 SJC immigration detainer ruling
BOSTON (SHNS) – The state's top public safety official advised lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey to take a closer look at a pivotal Supreme Judicial Court decision as officials grapple with how to respond to the Trump administration's immigration policies. The SJC's 2017 Lunn decision, which created guardrails for how Massachusetts and federal law enforcement can work together, is a 'significant issue,' said Secretary of Public Safety and Security Terrence Reidy. 'And we have spoken to federal authorities, and they recognize that that's an issue relative to criminals,' Reidy said during a Friday budget hearing in Clinton. 'And again, the governor, and the Senate, and the House are going to have to discuss this. I know there are some bills that have been proposed.' Reidy, in response to questions from Rep. Todd Smola, emphasized that his answer was focused on individuals who are in the state's criminal justice system — and not those embroiled in civil immigration matters. 'It's having a discussion, and a debate, and a decision of what the Legislature and the governor can do relative to Lunn. It's what the SJC asked when they decided that case,' Reidy continued. 'But that would be my focus, representative, is that decision, which could potentially alleviate some of the stressor and pressure that seems to be building between not just Massachusetts and the federal government, but a lot of states. But we're the ones that have that Lunn decision. ' The Lunn ruling, which drew a response at the time from former Gov. Charlie Baker, found that Massachusetts state law 'provides no authority for Massachusetts court officers to arrest and hold an individual solely on the basis of a Federal civil immigration detainer, beyond the time that the individual would otherwise be entitled to be released from State custody.' Reidy's testimony comes as Trump border czar Tom Homan sharpens his focus on Massachusetts, which he visited this month as federal law enforcement agents arrested 370 people here. Homan called those individuals 'illegal aliens,' describing the majority of them as 'significant criminals.' Gov. Maura Healey said in a TV interview that aired Sunday that she is 'very comfortable removing violent offenders from the streets, including those who should not be here, who are here unlawfully.' But she also suggested the state's laws where immigration and public safety overlap are sufficient. The governor reiterated that 'we are not a sanctuary state' and made clear that she does not see it as her role to get involved in efforts to reshape state law in response to a court ruling that effectively limits cooperation between state officials and federal immigration authorities. 'We have a law in place that's similar to many laws in place around this country, and it basically says, 'Look, state law enforcement, you work on crimes, you work on criminal investigations.' We regularly do investigations with local and federal authorities,' Healey said. Public outcry over Trump's immigration tactics escalated last week after masked federal agents arrested a Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who's from Turkey. Smola, a Warren Republican, did not directly invoke Öztürk, but he broadly acknowledged the 'highly politically charged issue' and new approach from the federal administration 'relative to migrants and to going after individuals when they're classified as serious criminals.' He pressed Reidy whether 'there is something that the commonwealth can or should be doing that would help this process the way it is unfolding now.' Reidy told Smola he sees 'some value in the sense of what ICE has spoken about, of not wanting to go into the communities.' Still, Reidy cautioned his answer 'could change in a heartbeat' depending on shifting federal policy, as the secretary attempted to explain current strategy at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 'What their focus is, is that if individuals who have detainers and have paperwork to be removed from the country, if they don't have to go into neighborhoods and into homes to apprehend those individuals, and they can get them — whether it's at the police station, the house of correction or the DOC — it's safer for everyone,' Reidy said. 'But it's the Lunn decision. I'm not minimizing anyone's perspective on it. We need to have a discussion and a debate on what to do, if anything, on that particular SJC case.' Rep. Steven Owens, who said Öztürk's arrest happened blocks away from his district, asked Reidy whether any state dollars were used in 'that operation' — and whether any state dollars recommended in Healey's fiscal 2026 budget could back 'similar operations.' The secretary said there wasn't any state involvement in the arrest, including from Massachusetts State Police. 'There is no funding in the governor's budget proposal to allow state law enforcement, first responders to go against the law,' Reidy said. 'In Massachusetts, they're precluded from acting, whether it's ICE detainers or whatever that action was in Medford. They are not allowed to do that.' After speaking at a Charles River Chamber event on Monday morning, Healey responded to a reporter's question about Öztürk's arrest, calling it 'very concerning' and 'deeply disturbing,' saying 'we need answers from the Trump administration.' Healey last week wouldn't give a specific comment on the arrest, saying she needed more information. 'Public safety and due process are not mutually exclusive,' she said Monday. 'Donald Trump said that he was going to target criminals, get them off the streets. I'm all for that. But, increasingly, what we're seeing is not that.' Healey said that Öztürk had a valid visa and was not aware that it had been revoked, and had been taken out of Massachusetts by federal officials. 'The Department of Homeland Security needs to provide information,' Healey said. 'We know nothing about the circumstances here. It appears that she's been targeted not because of crimes she committed, because she hadn't committed any crime, but she's been targeted because of what is free speech, and something that she signed onto in a student newspaper. So that is deeply concerning, deeply disturbing. We need answers.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
