Latest news with #SeanDuffy
Glasgow Times
6 hours ago
- Business
- Glasgow Times
Wise Group and DWP launch job support scheme in Glasgow
Called 'Connect,' the initiative is a joint effort between the Wise Group, a social enterprise, and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The programme will offer support at 15 Jobcentre Plus sites across the city, aligning with the UK Government's Get Britain Working White Paper. Read more: Tick list with names and numbers of people discovered during Glasgow coke raid The aim is to tackle economic inactivity and assist people in finding sustainable work. Support will be provided through live online sessions and personal, face-to-face mentoring for those who need it. The programme will focus on individuals who face multiple barriers to employment. The Connect programme will offer tailored support such as online coaching, employability sessions, diagnostic interviews, exit and action planning, and digital accessibility. Sean Duffy, chief executive of the Wise Group, said: "This partnership reflects our shared commitment to breaking down employment barriers, enhancing work readiness, and empowering communities across Glasgow to thrive. "Through Connect, we can meet people where they are - providing the tools, skills, and trusted support they need to build healthier, more secure futures." Ewan Speedie, senior external relations leader at the DWP, said: "Work Coaches across our Glasgow Jobcentres help each customer identify and break down their employment barriers, pointing them to support available to increase their readiness for work. "The Connect programme aims to provide tailored support for people who are currently out of work and who are looking to get back into the jobs market." A spokesperson from Jobcentre Plus said: "DWP (Central Scotland) Job Centres are delighted to be working with the Wise Group, to provide potentially life-changing opportunities for customers within Central Scotland. "With a strong focus on building trust, improving digital confidence, and promoting mental and physical wellbeing, the Connect programme exemplifies the Wise Group's commitment to delivering services that make a real and lasting difference." The programme's success will be measured through various key outcomes, including participant engagement, sustained participation and progression, as well as measurable improvements in wellbeing, digital capability, and work readiness.
CBS News
a day ago
- Business
- CBS News
As nation prepares for air traffic control overhaul, Vaughn College in Queens aims to be part of the solution. Here's how.
A college in Queens wants to be part of the solution when it comes to overhauling our country's air traffic control system. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Congress it will take more than $31 billion to get it done nationwide, and he said time is of the essence. Vaughn College in Queens is full of students who say they're ready to face the aviation industry's biggest challenges — from staffing shortages to equipment failures. Training there encompasses everything from pilots running simulations over Long Island to aviation management majors who want to work for the Federal Aviation Administration. "It really starts to turn the gears in my head wondering, how did we get here? How can we implement solutions in the future so it doesn't happen again?" student Elvira Pereyaslov said. President Trump's tax and spending bill includes more than $12 billion to get started on a major overhaul of the nation's air traffic control system. Duffy, however, told Congress the project will need tens of billions more. He said he wants to build a new version of the system by 2028 to address recent equipment failures. "As the federal government decides the equipment and what it's going to look like, and where do they start — we're hoping New York. So goes New York, so goes the country," Vaughn College president Sharon DeVivo said. And as CBS News New York was first to report back in the spring, Vaughn College will soon train some new FAA air traffic control hires on campus. The goal of that new program is to fight a nationwide air traffic controller shortage and get more controllers on the job faster. "We've been approved by the FAA. We're ready to go. We've got new equipment. Our instructors helped design that curriculum," DeVivo said. The team at Vaughn said they'll launch that new program this fall. They say they're starting small, with about 9-15 trainees.
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Safety is at Risk Warn NASA Staffers in Protest Letter
On July 21—the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon walk—287 current or former NASA employees signed or endorsed a strongly worded open letter to NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy. The letter objects to the space agency's draconian budget and personnel cuts proposed by the White House. Of those signatories, 131 openly wrote their names. The remaining 156, concerned for their jobs, lent their support anonymously. And then, too, there were 17 more names added at the bottom of the letter–belonging to 17 people who didn't have a say in whether their names were used or not. They included Gus Grissom, Ed White, Judith Resnik, Christa McAuliffe, Willie McCool, Kalpana Chawla and the other explorers who lost their lives in the Apollo 1 fire, the Challenger explosion, and the Columbia disintegration. The names were there for more than sentiment; they were there as pointed reminders of what can go wrong in the white-knuckle business of space—what too often does go wrong—when corners are cut, funding is slashed, and work forces are reduced in pursuit of short term budgetary gains. 'Safety is being compromised in every way,' says three time space veteran and retired NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, a signatory of the letter, in a conversation with TIME. 'We are courting another space disaster.' Coleman feels that danger more acutely than most. During the Columbia crew's training, she worked as their capsule communicator—or capcom—the sole voice between mission control and the astronauts. By the time the crew actually went to space, she was finishing up a rotation in Antarctica, assisting in NASA's meteor collection program. She was on her way home, staying with friends in New Zealand, when the terrible word from space came down. 'My friend called and said 'Cady, we lost Columbia. I remember thinking, 'How could we lose them?' It was definitely a hard journey home.' It's not just loss of crew safety that the 287 signatories of the open letter—dubbed The NASA Voyager Declaration—are protesting. There's the scrapping of projects like the Mars Sample Return Mission, which is already underway, with the Perseverance rover caching samples on the Martian surface for later return to Earth. There is the premature cancellation of the Space Launch System (SLS) moon rocket, and the Orion crew capsule, NASA's only crewed ride back to the moon. There is the proposed 50% cut to NASA space science missions, including the brand new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the all-but completed $4 billion observatory set for launch in May 2027—which now might be consigned to simply idling in its clean room in Greenbelt, Maryland. Overall, NASA faces a 24% budget cut, from $24.8 billion in 2025 to $18.8 billion in 2026—its lowest funding level since 2015. 'We dissent to the closing out of missions for which Congress has appropriated funding because it represents a permanent loss of capability to the United States both in space and on earth,' wrote the signatories. 'We dissent to implementing indiscriminate cuts to NASA science and aeronautics research because this will leave the American people without the unique public good that NASA provides.' And there's more. There's the loss of intellectual capital that comes when highly trained civil servant engineers are either sacked out of hand or pack their bags and go, taking their talents to the less political private sector, where job security is greater and compensation is higher. 'Thousands of NASA civil servant employees have already been terminated, resigned or retired early, taking with them highly specialized, irreplaceable knowledge crucial to carrying out NASA's mission,' reads the letter. Says retired NASA astronaut Terry Virts, now a candidate for a U.S. Senate Seat in the Democratic primary in Texas: 'These Trump personnel cuts to space exploration are undermining future generations of engineers and scientists as well as those mid-career employees who are at the height of their competency and productivity. It's as if a farmer is destroying his seed corn as well as his crops in the field. The damage that this administration is causing will last for a generation.' The number of anonymous signatories to the Voyager Declaration letter is perhaps a sign of wariness of an administration that is famously intolerant of—and punitive toward—perceived disloyalty. But NASA employees at least come with a modicum of institutional security. After the Columbia disaster in 2003—an accident that was partly the result of lower-echelon employees fearing for their jobs if they spoke out of turn about safety lapses they observed—NASA established its Technical Authority protocol, which provides protection for employees to report anomalies or dangerous corner-cutting to superiors outside their direct chain of command The signatories also cite an official NASA policy directive, similarly ensuring support for speaking truth to power. 'NASA supports full and open discussion of issues of any nature … including alternative and divergent views. Diverse views are to be fostered and respected in an environment of integrity and trust with no suppression or retribution.' The catch: The effective date of the rule was January 29, 2020, and the expiration January 29, 2025. Will the letter have any effect at all? Recent history doesn't portend good things. In June, employees at the National Institutes of Health penned a similar open letter, which yielded little result. Earlier this month, employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, filed their own letter, with even worse results; 140 of them were placed on administrative leave. But NASA backers are not giving up hope. For one thing, the steep budget cuts the White House proposes still have to be approved by Congress, and with thousands of NASA jobs in dozens of Congressional districts, lawmakers are disinclined to take money out of their constituents' pockets. The SLS and Orion were spared in just that way in 2010, when then President Barack Obama proposed scrapping them and Capitol Hill said no dice. And then too there is the less tangible, more lyrical side of space travel that may redound in NASA's favor. 'I'm an optimist,' says Coleman. 'There's something about space that's compelling. There are things out there we don't know about. I think that a letter about space is going to reach people. I think that people are going to understand that if we're saying this about space, we're saying it about microbiology, about sustainability too.' A single open letter may not be enough to change national space policy, but millions of voices expressing their support for it, just may.
Fox News
a day ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Even NYC Democrats are ‘applauding' the Transportation Department for work addressing crime, says Secretary Duffy
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy addresses efforts to crack down on crime in liberal city transportation systems on 'The Ingraham Angle.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Hundreds of Nasa workers rebuke ‘arbitrary' Trump cuts in scathing letter
Almost 300 current and former US Nasa employees, including at least four astronauts, have issued a scathing dissent opposing the Trump administration's sweeping and indiscriminate cuts to the agency, which they say threaten safety, innovation and national security. The formal letter, titled The Voyager Declaration, is addressed to the acting Nasa administrator, Sean Duffy, a staunch Trump loyalist appointed on 7 July who is also his transportation secretary. The declaration, which is dedicated to 17 astronauts who have died in past spaceflight incidents, warns of catastrophic consequences if the proposed cuts to science grants, staffing and international missions are implemented. 'Major programmatic shifts at Nasa must be implemented strategically so that risks are managed carefully,' the letter said. 'Instead, the last six months have seen rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission and caused catastrophic impacts on Nasa's workforce. Related: 'A disaster for all of us': US scientists describe impact of Trump cuts 'We are compelled to speak up when our leadership prioritizes political momentum over human safety, scientific advancement, and efficient use of public resources. These cuts are arbitrary and have been enacted in defiance of congressional appropriations law. The consequences for the agency and the country alike are dire.' The letter sounds the alarm over suggested changes to Nasa's Technical Authority, a system of safety checks and balances established in the wake of the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster that killed seven astronauts. 'The culture of organizational silence promoted at Nasa over the last six months already represents a dangerous turn away from the lessons learned after the Columbia disaster,' the declaration states. The declaration has 131 named signatures – including at least 55 current Nasa employees – and 156 anonymous signatories. Interim administrator Duffy, a former television host who was appointed after the ousting of a longtime Nasa employee, Janet Petro, is the final step in the chain of Technical Authority command. Trump's billionaire donor and former ally Elon Musk oversaw the loss of at least 2,600 of Nasa's 17,000-plus employees, according to Politico, before the billionaire businessman stepped back from the so-called 'department of government efficiency' (Doge). So far, at least $120m in Nasa grants have been terminated, and the White House has proposed slashing a quarter of the agency's total budget for next year. International missions have been cancelled, and almost half the agency's science budget could be cut in 2026. The signatories said they dissent from the indiscriminate cuts to Nasa research which supports national security by ensuring the US role as a global leader in science and technology. 'Basic research in space science, aeronautics, and the stewardship of the Earth are inherently governmental functions that cannot and will not be taken up by the private sector,' the letter says. The Voyager Declaration, named after the twin Nasa spacecraft that are exploring interstellar space, is only the latest formal dissent against Trump's unprecedented assault on science and federal agencies. In June, at least 300 employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published a declaration calling for the restoration of grants into life-saving treatments that the Trump administration had 'delayed or terminated for political reasons'. Earlier in July, 140 workers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were placed on administrative leave after signing a letter highlighting key concerns including a culture of fear at the agency, the cancellation of environmental justice programs and grants, undermining public trust and 'ignoring scientific consensus to protect polluters'. The best public interest journalism relies on first-hand accounts from people in the know. If you have something to share on this subject you can contact us confidentially using the following methods. Secure Messaging in the Guardian app The Guardian app has a tool to send tips about stories. Messages are end to end encrypted and concealed within the routine activity that every Guardian mobile app performs. This prevents an observer from knowing that you are communicating with us at all, let alone what is being said. If you don't already have the Guardian app, download it (iOS/Android) and go to the menu. Select 'Secure Messaging'. SecureDrop, instant messengers, email, telephone and post See our guide at for alternative methods and the pros and cons of each. Solve the daily Crossword
