News
British Prime Minister Liz Truss Resigns After 6 Weeks
British Prime Minister Liz Truss abruptly announced she is stepping down just six weeks after assuming office.
Truss surrendered to the inevitable when her right-wing tax-cut plan crumbled, and many Conservative Party MPs revolted.
Truss stated in front of 10 Downing Street that she would remain Prime Minister until a new successor is chosen to serve as Tory leader. Party officials stated that the next leader would be chosen on October 28th.
“I recognize that, given the circumstances, I am unable to carry out the mandate for which I was chosen by the Conservative Party,” Liz Truss stated. “As a result, I have informed His Majesty the King that I am retiring as Conservative Party leader.”
Truss, 47, resigned after only 44 days in office, making him the shortest-serving prime minister in British history.
Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, whose opposition party has risen in opinion polls — now leads the Conservatives by 30 points — as a result of Truss’ crisis-plagued term, has called it a general election “right now.”
Tory MPs rebelled against Liz Truss.
In dramatic scenes at the House of Commons late Wednesday, Truss’s tenure ended as a senior minister resigned, and numerous Tory MPs rebelled over a vital vote.
Over a dozen Conservative MPs had publicly asked Liz Truss to resign by Thursday morning after her tax-cutting ideas sparked a market meltdown during an already severe cost-of-living crisis.
Many more were said to have sent letters demanding her removal, even though party rules would have barred her from running for office again for a year.
“The prime minister acknowledged yesterday was a challenging day,” her official spokesman said. “She recognizes the public expected to see the government concentrating less on politics and more on fulfilling their priorities.”
She left after two hours.
Things came to a head on Wednesday after the Telegraph called it “a day of unparalleled mayhem.”
Home Secretary Suella Braverman resigned, ostensibly at Truss’ request, after sending a government document in a personal email.
Scenes in parliament
However, Braverman, an outspoken right-winger with widespread popularity among Tory members, used her resignation letter to launch a scathing attack on Truss.
There were then ludicrous scenes in parliament as several Tory MPs defied the government’s insistence that they withdraw the party’s manifesto vow to keep fracking banned.
Accusations arose of heavy-handed efforts to whip MPs into line, with several telling the media that it was the final nail in the Truss premiership’s coffin.
The party is now attempting to avoid a long leadership election by rallying around a unity candidate to replace her.
Truss defeated former finance minister Rishi Sunak in the leadership campaign after Boris Johnson resigned in July — but Johnson loyalists have pledged to prevent Sunak from being crowned now.
And Johnson, despite being at the centre of a series of scandals that eventually proved too much for his party to bear, is rumoured to be a viable candidate, according to The Telegraph.
“He’s listening but is believed to believe it’s an issue of national interest,” said Times political editor Steven Swinford.
Truss’ difficulties
Despite the short schedule, it is predicted that around 170,000 Conservative Party members will participate in the leadership process. Unless only one candidate remains, according to party rules, two candidates will be presented to the membership.
Truss’ difficulties began when her centrepiece tax-cutting strategy triggered market volatility, threatening the country’s pension funds and forcing her to make humiliating U-turns.
On Wednesday, Liz Truss removed close ally Kwasi Kwarteng over the budget catastrophe, replacing him with Jeremy Hunt, who quickly reversed almost all policy announcements.
According to the Daily Telegraph, Braverman departed following a “heated face-to-face row” with Truss and Hunt “about their requests to modify her stance on immigration.”
Despite removing Braverman as transportation secretary when she assumed power, Truss nominated Grant Shapps to replace him.
Shapps and Hunt had backed Sunak for the job, leaving her isolated inside her own government.
Braverman’s resignation letter came just hours after Truss used a combative speech in parliament to allay questions about her leadership.
Since the budget reversals, Truss was slammed by Labour’s Starmer at her first Prime Minister’s Questions.
As opposition MPs jeered and booed Truss and her own party’s MPs stayed mute, Starmer challenged the House of Commons, “What’s the sense of a prime minister whose pledges don’t even last a week?”
Truss’ successor will be the party’s fifth premier in less than seven years following the 2016 Brexit referendum, which ushered in an era of unprecedented political upheaval in the United Kingdom.
Source: CTN News
Business
United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents
United Airlines is attempting to reassure passengers following a spate of accidents on its Boeing jets this year. In a statement to customers, the airline states that safety is “at the center of everything that we do.”
“While they are all unrelated, I want you to know that these incidents have captured our attention and sharpened our focus,” CEO Scott Kirby wrote in a Monday morning statement to customers.
United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents
On Friday, a United Boeing 737-800 landed in Medford, Oregon, missing an underside fuselage panel.
Earlier this month, United experienced four mishaps, all involving Boeing jets. A United Boeing 737-900ER blew flames from its engine after takeoff from Houston, a Boeing 777 lost a wheel during takeoff from San Francisco, a Boeing 737 Max slipped off a runway in Houston, and a United Boeing 777 trailed hydraulic fluid as it left Sydney.
“Our team is reviewing the details of each case to understand what happened and using those insights to inform our safety training and procedures across all employee groups,” Kirby continued.
The airline is extending pilot training by one day, retooling training for new mechanics, and “dedicating more resources to supplier network management.”
Passengers witnessing a run of negative articles about the airline and its Boeing jets may consider booking elsewhere. In its letter, the airline is attempting to keep consumers from departing. As of the end of last year, 81% of the jets used on United’s mainline operations were manufactured by Boeing, compared to little more than half of the jets in rivals Delta and American Airlines’ mainline fleets.
Aside from the problems on flights, the most dramatic Boeing incident this year featured an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max 9, which lost a door stopper on a January 5 flight, resulting in a gaping hole in the plane’s side. And last week, a Latam Airlines flight from Sydney, Australia, to Auckland, New Zealand, fell unexpectedly, throwing some passengers to the cabin ceiling.
United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents
Investigators are still investigating the causes of both events, but a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board showed Boeing left the bolts required to keep the door plug in place on the 10-week-old Alaska Air jet. Boeing asserted that an incident in the cockpit rather than a problem with the aircraft’s systems may have caused the Latam accident.
The age of the aircraft in the United incidents suggests that the problem could be with their staff rather than Boeing’s well-documented quality faults. For example, Boeing purchased the jet that lost its panel on a Friday trip in 1998. So, Boeing’s quality difficulties are likely unrelated to that occurrence.
However, Boeing’s issues have impeded United’s operations. Due to the FAA’s production slowdown, it has halted hiring a new class of pilots since it will receive fewer new planes from Boeing this year, as previously promised. In January, the Alaska Air incident grounded its 737 Max 9 jets for three weeks.
United CEO Tries To Reassure Customers Following Multiple Safety Incidents
Furthermore, approval of a new generation of Boeing jets, the 737 Max 10, ordered by United, has been delayed due to the company’s quality and safety issues.
Kirby told investors last week that United is considering purchasing more jets from Boeing competitor Airbus. He also stated earlier this year that the Alaska Air incident was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” on United’s plans to receive deliveries of the Max 10 in the near future.’
SOURCE – (CNN)
Politics
For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.
According to new data, the world’s oceans have now been subjected to an unprecedented year of heat, with new temperature records being smashed every day.
Global water surface temperatures began breaking daily records in mid-March last year, according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, raising fears about marine life and extreme weather worldwide.
For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.
“The amplitude by which previous sea surface temperature records were beaten in 2023, and now again in 2024, is remarkable,” said Joel Hirschi, associate head of marine systems modelling at the National Oceanography Centre in the United Kingdom.
Gregory C. Johnson, a NOAA oceanographer, reported that the global average ocean temperature in 2023 was 0.25 degrees Celsius higher than the previous year. That increase “is equivalent to about two decades’ worth of warming in a single year,” he told CNN. “So it is quite large, quite significant, and a bit surprising.”
According to scientists, human-caused global warming, along with El Niño, a natural climate trend characterized by higher-than-average water temperatures, is accelerating heat.
The biggest repercussions are for marine life and global weather. As the global waterwarms, hurricanes and other extreme weather phenomena, such as blistering heat waves and heavy rains, may gain more force.
High temperatures are already wreaking havoc on coral. In March, based on aerial observations, authorities declared that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is witnessing its seventh mass bleaching episode.
Bleaching happens when heat-stressed corals release the algae that dwell in their tissue and serve as a food supply. If water temperatures continue too high for too long, corals will starve and die.
For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.
Data from NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch program suggest that the crisis extends far beyond Australia, with the world potentially facing a fourth worldwide mass coral bleaching event in the coming months.
Ocean heat creates the conditions for more powerful hurricanes. “The warmer the ocean, the more energy to fuel storms is available,” said Karina von Schuckmann, an oceanographer at Mercator Ocean International in France.
Temperatures in the North Atlantic, an water area important for storm generation, have been unusual, startling some scientists who are still investigating the specific causes.
“At times, the records (in the North Atlantic) have been broken by margins that are virtually statistically impossible,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School, said to CNN.
If water temperatures remain high in the second half of 2024 and a La Niña event intensifies the Atlantic hurricane season, “this would increase the risk of a very active hurricane season,” Hirschi explained.
The oceans contain around 90% of the world’s excess heat generated by burning planet-heating fossil fuels. “Measuring water warming allows us to track the status and evolution of planetary warming,” Schuckmann stated in an interview with CNN. “The ocean is the sentinel for global warming.”
El Niño is expected to weaken and fade in the coming months, perhaps reducing record water temperatures if La Niña replaces it.
For The Past Year, Global Ocean Temperatures Has Set New Records On A Daily Basis.
“In the past, surface temperature values have decreased after the passage of El Niño,” Schuckmann said. However, she cautioned that it is now hard to forecast when water temperatures will fall below record levels.
While natural climatic variability will cause water temperatures to vary, NOAA’s Johnson predicts that in the long run, they will “continue to break records as long as greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere rise.”
SOURCE – (CNN)
News
Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote
Vladimir Putin won a historic fifth term as Russia’s president on Monday, as the electoral commission announced the results of a referendum in which he faced no serious challenges and took place amid the toughest crackdown on dissent and free speech since Soviet times.
Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote
Putin claimed that the landslide majority demonstrated Russians’ “trust” and “hopes” in him, while lawmakers throughout Europe blasted the vote as a hoax and Russia’s efforts to conduct elections in seized portions of Ukraine that it claims as its territory.
Here’s what Putin, European leaders, and others say:
“Of course, we have a lot of work ahead. But I’d like to clarify one thing: no one has ever been able to intimidate or stifle our will or self-conscience since our consolidation. They have failed in the past and will fail in the future. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.
“The elections took place in an ever-shrinking political space, which has resulted in an alarming increase of violations of civil and political rights, and precluded many candidates from running, including all those opposed to Russia’s illegal war of aggression.” – Statement from the European Union.
“These Russian elections highlight the intensity of repression under President Putin’s administration, which tries to stifle all dissent to his illegal war. Putin eliminates his political opponents, controls the media, and declares himself the winner. “This is not a democracy.” — David Cameron, UK Foreign Secretary.
Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote
“Searches at voting stations’ entrances, attempts to examine ballots before voters place them in ballot boxes, and detentions of voters who arrived at noon. According to reports, at one voting location in Moscow, police asked that the chairman of a commission (of poll workers) unlock a ballot box and hand them a ballot with anything inscribed on it. This is the first time in my life that I have witnessed such ridiculousness.” — Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chair of Golos, the independent election watchdog, on Telegram.
Reactions As Vladimir Putin Secures A Fifth Term As Russia’s President After Tightly Controlled Vote
“The Russian election was one without a choice. Holding so-called elections in portions of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia violates international law. It is all the more amazing that so many Russians made it known over the weekend that they do not agree with this Russian president. That you go to a polling station even if you’re surrounded by military earns me the highest respect.” — German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.
SOURCE – (AP)
-
World5 months ago
Hurricane Otis Now A Catastrophic Category 5 Storm Off Mexico’s Pacific Coast Nearing Acapulco
-
Entertainment5 months ago
Spider-Man 2 Fastest-Selling Game Made By PlayStation
-
News4 months ago
Death Toll From Flooding In Somalia Climbs To Nearly 100
-
Politics5 months ago
Pope Francis Encourages More Children To Code, Especially In Catholic Countries
-
World4 months ago
2023: Russian Attacks Ramps Up On Key Cities In Eastern Ukraine
-
Celebrity5 months ago
Barbie Movie Reverses Mattel’s Toy Sales Slump