Latest news with #publicsupport
CBC
a day ago
- General
- CBC
Halifax completes maintenance work after diverting wastewater into harbour
Social Sharing After diverting millions of cubic metres of wastewater into Halifax harbour and the Bedford Basin, Halifax Water's treatment facilities have returned to normal operations. The utility announced in late April that it needed to replace UV lighting equipment at its facilities in Halifax and Dartmouth, which caused them to be shut down for different periods of time. It said the way the system is set up, it could not divert wastewater to other locations. Halifax Water said the maintenance work at the Halifax treatment facility was completed on May 1 and on May 31 at the Dartmouth facility. The utility previously said the project would result in approximately two million cubic metres of wastewater to be released into the harbour from 14 approved relief points between the Fairview neighbourhood and downtown Halifax. It was asking residents in certain areas to reduce their use of running water, including flushing toilets less often and limiting use of washing machines. "Halifax Water appreciates the public's support in reducing their water consumption and minimizing recreational activities during the maintenance window," a news release said. The utility said it will provide a final report to Environment and Climate Change Canada and anticipates it will share the sampling results on its website.
Telegraph
7 days ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Resident doctors lose public support for strikes after bumper pay rises
Resident doctors have lost the public's support to strike after receiving inflation-busting pay rises, a poll has suggested. The medics, formerly known as junior doctors, are currently voting on staging another six months of walkouts despite receiving an almost 30 per cent pay rise within three years. The British Medical Association's (BMA) resident doctors' committee is urging members to vote in favour of strike action, claiming they are paid 23 per cent less in real-terms than they were in 2008. A new poll of 4,100 British adults by YouGov found that 48 per cent of Britons oppose resident doctors going on strike, while just 39 per cent support them taking action. The pollsters said this 'marks a shift in opinion' of public support with a survey last summer finding 52 per cent of Britons were in support of striking junior doctors. The doctors have taken to picket lines on 11 separate occasions since beginning industrial action. Last week it was announced they would receive an inflation-busting 5.4 per cent pay rise for this financial year, double what was initially budgeted for by the Government and more than the 3.6 per cent given to other staff. This follows a 22 per cent uplift that the BMA's members voted to accept from Labour last year to end its dispute. But less than a year later they are threatening to go on strike again with a ballot set to close on July 7. If they choose to go on strike, then walk outs could begin in July and could potentially last until January 2026. Conservative MPs told The Telegraph how Labour's decision to 'cave in' to unions on winning the general election last year emboldened them. Edward Argar, the Tory shadow health secretary, said Labour 'were warned that caving in to union demands last year for above-inflation pay rises, with no strings attached, risked fuelling further disruption'. Steve Barclay, the former Conservative health secretary, said the Government had 'repeatedly caved in to demands in its first year, whether indicating this week to its backbenchers on the two-child benefit payments, to their trade union paymasters without improvements in productivity and to trade partners like the EU on fishing and with the Chagos Island payments.' The pay rises for NHS staff on the agenda for change banding system – which does not include doctors – is set to cost the Government an extra £1 billion per year alone. The YouGov poll also highlighted that Labour supporters were most supportive of strike action, with Conservative voters most likely to oppose them. A leading patients' organisation said it was 'deeply concerned' about the prospect of strike action over the busy winter period in the NHS. Rachel Power, the chief executive of the Patients' Association, called for both sides to resolve the dispute quickly after the last series of industrial action 'caused so much harm to patients', delaying millions of appointments and costing more than £2 billion. Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said on Tuesday that he understood 'the anxiety and anger that resident doctors have felt and continue to feel about their part of the profession'. 'That's why, within weeks of coming into office, I was determined to resolve the pay dispute and give resident doctors a substantial pay rise. That's now being followed by another above-inflation average pay award of 5.4 per cent,' he said. 'The result is that resident doctors have seen their pay increase by 28.9 per cent compared to three years ago. The average starting salary of a full-time resident doctor is now around £38,800 - up nearly £9,500 since 2022/23. 'I want to work in partnership with resident doctors to deliver the change that the NHS is crying out for.'
Fox News
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Social media support for accused killers Luigi Mangione, Elias Rodriguez an 'exceptionally bad sign': expert
Social media users have been drawing comparisons between online support for accused killers Elias Rodriguez, Rodney Hinton Jr. and Luigi Mangione. "That people who commit murder are receiving any meaningful amount of public support, seemingly because the victims are seen by the murder's supporters as belonging to the political opposition, is an exceptionally bad sign for our society," Nicholas Creel, Georgia College and State University ethics professor, told Fox News Digital. "Democracy requires people to be committed to certain values, such as the peaceable resolution of our differences. Without that, we're at risk for a far wider breakdown in the rule of law, the kind where mass atrocities can easily arise." Rodriguez, 31, of Chicago, is accused of killing Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, a young engaged couple who worked at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday evening outside the Capital Jewish Museum. Mangione, 26, is charged with first-degree murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism, stalking and a slew of other state and federal charges in both New York and Pennsylvania for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a 50-year-old married father of two, on a sidewalk in Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024. Hinton, 38, is charged with aggravated murder after he allegedly "intentionally" struck retired Hamilton County Deputy Larry Henderson, who was directing traffic near the University of Cincinnati during a graduation ceremony, with a vehicle around 1 p.m. on May 2. He allegedly killed the officer a day after Cincinnati police fatally shot his son during a foot pursuit, according to police. Experts who spoke with Fox News Digital also noted social media support for 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, who shot at then-presidential candidate Donald Trump during his 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, before being fatally shot by responding officers. "Now that we're seeing these other murders get the same kind of attention [as Brian Thompson's], it does seem to be a pattern that is fairly new in terms of the reaction to this," Creel told Fox News Digital regarding support for Mangione and Rodriguez specifically. "So when you get this larger and larger portion of the population that's willing to … sanction that sort of behavior, you become very much ripe for a sort of authoritarian takeover, the kind that can start to lead to mass atrocities." He added that the most recent killings of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim represent a "very destructive sort of behavior to society." "When we look at how does a country become a democracy and remain one – because that's never a guarantee – what we tend to see is there's certain values society has to hold, and one of those is the idea of not resorting to violence," Creel said. He and his colleague, Ania Rynarzewska, an assistant professor of marketing, have conducted research showing that people feel more empowered when their radical beliefs and ideas get support online. "Our research has found so far that before [Thompson's murder], people felt powerless. So they felt like their voice didn't matter," Rynarzewska said. "And after the incident and after people started voicing their opinion on social media … they felt more empowered to speak. They felt like their voices were in the majority, so they no longer have to suppress it." In all three cases, authorities allege that the suspects had political or personal motives behind their respective alleged actions, and all three men are receiving support, both monetary and nonfinancial, from radical social media users. A preliminary investigation in the Rodriguez case shows the suspect was allegedly observed pacing back and forth outside the museum before he approached a group of four people leaving the building, including the two victims, and began shooting, D.C. authorities said. He then entered the museum, where he was detained by event security. While in custody, he yelled, "Free, free Palestine!" Mangione similarly shouted a message after his arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania. "It's completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and its lived experience," Mangione shouted outside a courthouse in Hollidaysburg days after his arrest. Paul Mauro, former NYPD inspector and Fox News contributor, told Fox News Digital that Mangione, Rodriguez, Hinton and Crooks represent "a very specialized class of violent losers." "At some point, everybody's been down in their luck," Mauro said. "But … when you are in and around 30 years old, and you are still clinging to these adolescent beliefs about the world and how you are on the side of the righteous because you are a member of a particular internet forum, and you're willing to … extinguish the lives of others … you're going to take away loved ones from families. Well, I'm sorry, but you guys are in a class by yourselves." He added that law enforcement professionals have seen such activity by young radicals "developing" since about 2020. Mauro also said officials should be following the money that U.S. colleges and universities are receiving from nongovernment organizations and whether any of that funding comes from U.S. adversaries, such as Iran. The former NYPD inspector noted that Rodriguez, Mangione, Crooks and, to an extent, Hinton are all relatively young men who had "their whole lives ahead of them" before allegedly hunting down people they believed to be their political or personal "opponents." "They weaponize these college kids who are susceptible and naive and who have never really been scuffed up by the real world," Mauro said. "And in many cases, they don't want to be. They don't really want to go out and get jobs and do all the stuff that we did. … And they stay in this hyperprogressive bubble thinking that they're on the side of the righteous. And then what happens is they manage to survive." Creel and Rynarzewska similarly noted that young people who are lonely or isolated tend to find a sense of community in people who share radical views online. "From a bigger societal perspective, that's where we really see the destructive influence on … youth," Creel said. "When you're young, you're developing your sense of the world. You're coming to figure out, when you come of age, what's acceptable, what's not. That's when norms are being developed, your values take hold. And so, because of that, when you see these far more fringe-type positions of people supporting violence – murder, even – that becomes one of those things that then you think is normalized." Mangione and Hinton have pleaded not guilty to their respective crimes. Fox News Digital has reached out to their attorneys for comment.
BBC News
21-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
How a joke about rice cost a Japan cabinet minister his job
When Japan's farm minister declared that he never had to buy rice because his supporters give him "plenty" of it as gifts, he hoped to draw laughs. Instead Taku Eto drew outrage - and enough of it to force him to resign. Japan is facing its first cost-of-living crisis in decades, which is hitting a beloved staple: rice. The price has more than doubled in the last year, and imported varieties are few and far between. Eto apologised, saying he had gone "too far" with his comments on Sunday at a local fundraiser. He resigned after opposition parties threatened a no-confidence motion against him. His ousting deals a fresh blow to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's minority government, which was already struggling with falling public can be a powerful trigger in Japan, where shortages have caused political upsets before. Riots over the soaring cost of rice even toppled a government in it's not that surprising that rice prices have a role in Ishiba's plummeting approval ratings."Politicians don't go to supermarkets to do their grocery shopping so they don't understand," 31-year-old Memori Higuchi tells the BBC from her home in Higuchi is a first-time mother of a seven-month-old. Good food for her postnatal recovery has been crucial, and her daughter will soon start eating solid food."I want her to eat well so if prices keep going up, we may have to reduce the amount of rice my husband and I eat." A costly error? It's a simple issue of supply and demand, agricultural economist Kunio Nishikawa of Ibaraki University he believes it was caused by a government 1995, the government controlled the amount of rice farmers produced by working closely with agricultural cooperatives. The law was abolished that year but the agriculture ministry continues to publish demand estimates so farmers can avoid producing a glut of Prof Nishikawa says, they got it wrong in 2023 and 2024. They estimated the demand to be 6.8m tonnes, while the actual demand, he adds, was 7.05m tonnes. Demand for rice went up because of more tourists visiting Japan and a rise in people eating out after the pandemic. But actual production was even lower than the estimate: 6.61m tonnes, Prof Nishikawa says."It is true that the demand for rice jumped, due to several factors - including the fact that rice was relatively affordable compared to other food items and a rise in the number of overseas visitors," a spokesperson for the agriculture ministry told the BBC."The quality of rice wasn't great due to unusually high temperatures which also resulted in lower rice production." Growing rice is no longer profitable Rice farmers have been unable to make enough money for many years, says 59-year-old Kosuke Kasahara, whose family have been in farming for explains that it costs approximately 18,500 yen ($125.70; £94.60) to produce 60kg of rice but the cooperative in his area of Niigata on the west coast of Japan offered to buy it last year at 19,000 yen."Until three or four years ago, the government would even offer financial incentives to municipalities that agreed to reduce rice production," he ministry spokesperson confirms that the government has offered subsidies to those choosing to produce wheat or soybeans instead of younger farmers have been choosing to produce different types of rice that are used for sake, rice crackers or fed to livestock because demand for rice in Japan had been falling until last year."I got tired of fighting retailers or restaurants that wanted me to sell rice cheaply for many years," says Shinya that's been flipped on its head, with the going rate for 60kg of rice today at 40,000 to 50,000 higher prices are bad news for shoppers, it means many struggling farmers will finally be able to make as the public grew angry with the surge, the government auctioned some of its emergency reserves of rice in March to try to bring prices down. Many countries have strategic reserves - stockpiles of vital goods - of crude oil or natural gas to prepare for exceptional circumstances. In Asia, many governments also have stockpiles of recent years, Japan's rice stockpile had only been tapped in the wake of natural disasters."The government has always told us that they would not release its emergency rice stocks to control the price so we felt betrayed," Mr Tabuchi the government's rare decision to release rice, prices have continued to rise. Tackling soaring prices The cost of rice is also soaring in South East Asia, which accounts for almost 30% of global rice production - economic, political and climate pressures have resulted in shortages in recent Japan though the issue has become so serious that the country has begun importing rice from South Korea for the first time in a quarter of a century, even though consumers prefer homegrown Ishiba has also hinted at expanding imports of US rice as his government continues to negotiate a trade deal with Washington. But shoppers like Ms Higuchi say they are unlikely to buy non-Japanese rice."We've been saying local production for local consumption for a long time," she says. "There has to be a way for Japanese farmers to be profitable and consumers to feel safe by being able to afford home-grown produce." This divides opinion among farmers."You may hear that the industry is ageing and shrinking but that is not necessarily true," says Mr Tabuchi, who believes the sector has been too protected by the government."Many elderly farmers can afford to sell rice cheaply because they have pensions and assets but the younger generation has to be able to make money. Instead of guaranteeing the income of all the farmers and distorting the market, the government should let unprofitable farmers fail."Mr Kasahara disagrees: "Farming in rural areas like ours is about being part of a community. If we let those farmers fail, our areas will be in ruins."He argues the government should set a guaranteed buying price of 32,000 to 36,000 yen per 60kg of rice which is lower than today's price but still allows farmers to be given what happened to Eto, it is also a sensitive topic for country is due to hold a key national election this summer so pleasing both consumers and farmers - especially the elderly in both camps who tend to vote more - is crucial.
Yahoo
17-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - Let the colleges fail
The U.S. is known for having both exceptional private business enterprises. It is the prime mover in creating the most powerful and bountiful economy in history and also for having great colleges and universities. Its schools dominate world college rankings and draw students from throughout the world. Yet American universities are facing a dramatic decline in public support. This is manifested in lower enrollments today than a dozen years ago and widespread threats to their funding, as both the Trump administration (via threats to revoke tax exemptions, reduced research support, etc.) and Congress pose what some college leaders deem existential threats to their very existence. Additionally, some state governments are beginning to sharply increase their intervention into the affairs of public universities that have historically exercised a great deal of independence. A major reason corporations are faring far better than universities in today's public policy milieu can be explained by one word: ownership. Everyone knows who owns and controls the operations of American companies, but who 'owns' or controls our universities? We all know that Elon Musk makes the key decisions at SpaceX and Tesla, but who does so at elite universities like Harvard or Stanford, or even at distinctly less selective and prestigious schools, such as Ball State University in Indiana or the University of District Columbia? Who owns or 'runs' Harvard? Is its president, Alan Garber, truly the 'CEO?' Is the controlling authority the governing board — or in Harvard's case, one of the two governing boards? Is it the faculty, whose presence is absolutely essential to carrying out the dominantly important institutional functions of discovering and disseminating knowledge? Is it a vast and ever-growing bureaucracy that constitutes the administrative bloat raising university costs and diluting the emphasis on the primary academic functions? Is it the students whose presence, like the faculty, is the whole point of higher learning? Is it rich alumni, like Johns Hopkins' Michael Bloomberg or the University of Oregon's Phil Knight, whose multi-billion dollar contributions are critically important to the future of those institutions? Are any of these the 'owners' in any sense? Or, are universities often better viewed as confederations of various largely autonomous fiefdoms that pay allegiance and some funds to a central administration, very much like feudal lords in the Middle Ages nominally recognized a distant king to whom they paid some feudal dues? Using Harvard as an example, does the Harvard Business School pay a tax out of its tuition and endowment revenues to President Garber across the Charles River, mainly so that it can continue to use the prestigious name 'Harvard?' And what of others using the Harvard moniker — Harvard Law School, Harvard College (undergraduate school), the Kennedy School of Government, etc.? This brings us to another term explaining the difference between the relative efficiency of colleges and American business: incentives. In American business, major errors in decision-making can literally be either a death sentence or being put on life support, but success provides owners and CEOs with vast wealth. In contrast, a successful college president might get a bonus of $100,000, although his or her head football coach, effectively running a business in a highly competitive market environment, might get a salary vastly dwarfing that of his nominal university president boss. The great Austrian-American economist Joseph Schumpeter said that capitalism thrives on 'creative destruction,' whereby failing company resources are ultimately absorbed by newer successful enterprises better serving changing consumer tastes or more adroitly responding to new technology. In higher education, if you make a big mistake, you might not get an annual raise; in business, a big mistake very likely will cost you your job. In my new book, I argue that the dulling of incentives and ambiguity of ownership have contributed to the recent decline in support for our universities. Fortunately, the incentive system of markets, while heavily diluted by governmental and philanthropic subsidies, are still somewhat present in higher education, and the threat of severe retrenchment or even closure hopefully will lead to needed reforms as more colleges realize their very existence is imperiled. Richard Vedder is the author of 'Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education.' He is also a distinguished professor emeritus in economics at Ohio University and a senior fellow at the Independent Institute. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
