Teachers strike back on as union rejects renewed pay offer from Welsh Government

Teachers will walk out again on March 2 and two more strike days likely later on in March


Abbie Wightwick

Education Editor

 15 FEB 2023

The picket line at Cardiff High on February 1 (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne)

Teachers in Wales will strike again on March 2 after rejecting a renewed pay offer from the Welsh Government. NEU Cymru members said the new offer was “just not good enough”.

Hundreds of schools shut on February 1 as teachers walked out of the classroom over the initial 5% pay offer. Education Minister Jeremy Miles came back last week with a further 1.5% pay rise and the offer of a one off cash bonus also equivalent to 1.5% of a teacher's salary.


The NEU postponed planned strikes for February 14 while that was put to members. They have now come back with a resounding rejection. A similar offer has also been rejected by ambulance workers who are members of the Unite union.

Read more: Read more: The powerful reasons teachers on the picket line gave for why they are striking

Striking Teachers from Swansea picketing on February 1 (Image: NEU Cymru)

In a statement the NEU Cymru said: “Following a meeting of Welsh representatives last evening, the National Education Union has rejected the pay offer made by Wales’ Minister for Education and the Welsh Language, at a meeting of trade unions held last week.”

Speaking about the decision, Joint General Secretary Kevin Courtney said: “In good faith the union postponed the day of action scheduled for 14 February, whilst we conveyed full details of the Jeremy Miles’ offer and sought feedback from members in Wales.


“They have emphatically informed us that the offer of an additional 1.5% added to teachers pay, plus an additional 1.5% lump-sum is simply not good enough and fails to address either the cost of living crisis, spiralling inflation, nor the damage done to pay since 2010.

“We have a clear mandate for strike action that is now rescheduled for 2 March in schools across Wales. “We have thanked the minister for being prepared to negotiate with us, in stark contrast to the Westminster Government”

The revised offer from the Welsh Government, which came late on February 8, which would see teachers get an extra 1.5% % on top of the 5% already offered - and a further 1.5% as a one off payment - you can read more about the offer and what it would have meant here.

To get our free daily briefing on the biggest issues affection the nation, Wales Matters, click here

Wales Secretary David Evans added: “NEU Cymru are committed to seeking a resolution to this dispute on behalf of teacher and support staff members employed across Wales. Our demands have been clear, and we will meet with the minister and his officials as often as necessary in order to seek to secure a deal that will resolve all issues.

“Whilst we acknowledge that the Welsh Government have made offers that include seeking to address workload and reopening negotiations for 2023/24, those offers still fall short of our members expectations and needs.”

NEU local representatives described the mood as “angry and determined” and said teachers felt ignore. The said they are striking not just for fair pay but also what they said is a crisis in recruitment and retainment as a result of low pay awards over many years and lack of school funding.

Headteachers who are members of the NAHT in Wales are also continuing a work to rule. They are being balloted on the new offer. It will be an electronic ballot closing February 27.

UK strikes hit a 30-year high as inflation erodes pay

By Hanna Ziady, CNN
Tue February 14, 2023

Education workers rally in Westminster, London during a day of strikes across the United Kingdom on February 1, 2023.Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
LondonCNN —

The United Kingdom lost more working days to strikes in 2022 than in any year since 1989, as employees walked out in large numbers over pay amid soaring living costs.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed Tuesday that nearly 2.5 million working days were lost to industrial action between June and December, the highest since 1989 when 4.1 million days were lost.

The ONS said 843,000 working days were lost in December 2022 alone — the highest monthly number since November 2011.

Workers in health care, communications and transportation were among those who walked out in the run-up to Christmas. The Royal College of Nursing, which represents nearly 500,000 nurses, midwives and health care assistants, staged its first ever strike in December.

Britain hit by biggest day of strikes in a decade as pay disputes escalate

Strike action has dragged into the new year, disrupting schools and public transport. As many as half a million workers, including teachers, staged the biggest single day of walkouts in more than a decade on February 1.

Workers are demanding higher wages as they grapple with a cost-of-living crisis, with inflation near its highest level in four decades. Many public sector workers have been offered raises of 4% or 5% for the current financial year, far lower than the 10.5% annual inflation rate in December. The ONS will publish inflation figures for January on Wednesday.
Real pay falls

The UK government has so far refused to grant public sector workers higher pay awards, arguing that doing so risks making the inflation problem worse. The government is instead introducing laws that will make it harder for key workers to strike.

The ONS said Tuesday that after taking inflation into account, growth in average regular pay, which excludes bonuses, fell by 2.5% between October and December 2022 compared with the same period in 2021. That’s among the largest drops since records began in 2001.

For public sector workers, the decline in real pay will have been worse as, without adjusting for inflation, their wages grew a lot less compared with private sector earnings. Average regular pay growth for the public sector was 4.2% in the final three months of last year compared with the same period in 2021, versus growth of 7.3% for the private sector.

The ONS said private sector pay growth was at its strongest outside the height of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Although there is still a large gap between earnings growth in the public and private sectors, this narrowed slightly in the latest period,” ONS director of economic statistics Darren Morgan said in a statement. “Overall, pay, though, continues to be outstripped by rising prices.”

A separate survey published Monday by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD) found that UK employers expect to give employees a median pay rise of 5% this year, the highest increase in 11 years.

“However, median anticipated public sector pay rise expectations of 2% lag those in the private sector at 5%, with the gap providing the context for ongoing discontent and strikes among key public sector workers,” the CIPD said.

UK

Extinction Rebellion activists block private jet terminals at Luton Airport to protest ‘wealthy polluters’

EMILY CHUDY
15 Feb 2023

Extinction Rebellion activists have blocked private jet terminals at Luton Airport to protest wealthy private jet owners (Extinction Rebellion)

While many of us are growing ever-more concerned about catastrophic global warming, the super-wealthy are continuing to jet around the world on private planes, emitting more carbon than half of the world’s population put together.

Extinction Rebellion (XR) is now looking to target the richest emitters, blocking private jet terminals at Luton Airport on Tuesday (February 14) as part of a new strategy to “make wealthy polluters pay” and move away from disrupting the lives of “normal working people”

The environmental group claimed the protest, which involved XR members blockading the entrances to Luton Airport’s Harrods Aviation and Signature private jet terminals, formed a demand to the UK government to “ban private jets” and “tax frequent flyers”.

The group of activists reportedly took to the airport and blocked all three gates to the private jet terminal, holding flags and banners reading: “Love in action”.

“I’m an aviation worker, but feel that I can’t stand by watching the emissions from my industry continue to grow and contribute so heavily to the climate change carnage wreaking havoc around the world,” Finlay Asher, 32, founder of Safe Landing, a group for ex-aviation workers concerned about the climate, said.

“These impacts are mostly felt by the poorest communities, so it’s sickening to also realise that an elite minority of super-rich mega polluters are responsible for the majority of global emissions from air travel.”



Further protests took place at Malpensa Private Airport in Italy and the AIR OPS business aviation conference in Brussels, with a climate activist crashing onto the stage bearing a “Make Them Pay” banner.

Activist Nigel Harvey, 60, explained that the action fell in line with XR’s new guidelines shifting its demonstrations away from public disruption.

“Extinction Rebellion and other climate activist groups are often criticised for disrupting the lives of ‘normal working people’ – well it should be clear that owning a private jet isn’t normal,” the recycling company chief executive said.

“This is a targeted action – we’re disrupting only the top one per cent: the highest-income, highest emitters who are most responsible for pollution and have the most power to affect changes.”



The use of private jets by celebrities and the ultra-wealthy has come under intense scrutiny in recent years, with so-called “super emitters” being held accountable by Twitter bots tracking private jets making journeys of as little as four minutes.

A 2020 study found that “super emitters” including private jet users fly an average of 35,000 miles a year, with one per cent of the world’s population responsible for half of global carbon emissions from aviation in 2018.

In contrast, a reported 80 per cent of the global population has never stepped foot on a plane.

A spokesperson for Luton Airport told The Big Issue in a statement: “A peaceful protest took place away from the main terminal without causing any disruption.

“Flights and access to the airport were unaffected.”

SEC custody rule change threatens crypto firms

Feb 15, 2023
—by Protos Staff



The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is proposing a modification to the custody rule for investment advisors holding client assets that would reduce choices for advisors managing cryptocurrencies.

The rule expands the requirements to all client assets, rather than just securities and funds. This would require all adviser-held assets to sit with a qualified custodian — generally, a bank, trust company, broker-dealer, futures commission merchant, or some foreign financial institutions.

During the open meeting on Wednesday, February 15, crypto assets were specifically mentioned repeatedly as one of the asset types that were not explicitly and completely covered under the existing version of the rule but would be included under this amended version.

SEC chair Gary Gensler also made it clear that he believes that “most crypto assets are securities or funds covered under the current rule.”

The new version of the rule requires investment advisors to enter into a written agreement with qualified custodians for their client assets that will ensure that the custodian is living up to the expectations. In order for foreign financial institutions to qualify as a custodian they will need to have implemented an anti-money laundering (AML) program compatible with United States regulations.

Read more: PayPal halts stablecoin launch amid BUSD and Paxos scrutiny

The rule also makes changes related to record-keeping for investment advisors and expands the examination options for qualified custodians.

Commissioner Hester Peirce and Commissioner Mark Uyeda both voiced concerns about the availability of qualified custodians for cryptocurrency assets. This is particularly relevant given recent communications from various regulators dissuading various entities from engaging in cryptocurrency custody.

Peirce also worried about the 12-month timeframe for implementing this change, and that the SEC was using its regulatory authority over registered investment advisers to enact changes in the behavior of custodians, who don’t necessarily fall under SEC jurisdiction.

The commissioners voted four to one in favor of supporting this new rule with Commissioner Peirce dissenting.

There will now be a 60-day comment period where the public will be able to share their comments on these changes.

The SEC has been taking a broad look at cryptocurrency recently, including sending a Wells Notice to Paxos, alleging that Binance USD is an unregistered security.

How this Black residential school survivor from the N.W.T. finds peace through art

Sat, February 18, 2023

Robert Burke in his painting studio on Vancouver Island. (Submitted by Robert Burke - image credit)

These days, 79-year-old Robert Burke often spends his time on Vancouver Island with paintbrush in hand, revisiting scenes from his tumultuous youth.

The art he creates is a reflection of the years he spent in St. Joseph's residential school in Fort Resolution, N.W.T., and later at St. Mary's Boys Home in Edmonton — the two institutions that consumed much of his childhood from the age of four on.

"It wasn't a very happy experience, being in the residential school. You know, it was life," Burke said.

"It's the way life was. You were on your own when you were at residential school, right?"

Burke was on his own the rest of the time, too, the orphaned son of a Black U.S. soldier and an Indigenous woman from Fort Smith, N.W.T., who abandoned him.

He grew up living with various people when he wasn't at residential school. Sometimes, he would live with other Indigenous people out in the bush; other times, he spent the night at the police station just for a place to sleep.

They aren't good memories, he noted. But he doesn't blame the community or the region for what happened to him.

"I'm positive of what happened, because it made me who I am," he said. Then, bluntly: "You know, I'm not a successful artist. But I'm getting known, and things are working out."

Submitted by Robert Burke

The 'silent breed'

At the schools themselves, there was no such thing as a Black community the way we might talk about it today, he noted, but there were other Black boys there. They felt a special connection to each other, he added.

Sixty-seven years on, Burke still talks to some of them a couple times a year.

One of the art series Burke has painted is about what he calls the "silent breed" — half-Indigenous children.

"I just did it as a result of knowing who I was, because most of my life they've been trying to tell me I was somebody else," Burke said.

"I understood who I was, because I always knew who I was from childhood. You know, you're called an [N-word] when you're a little kid, you know what that's all about."

Hidden history

Though Burke doesn't know who his father was, he knows he was one of thousands of U.S. soldiers who came north to work on the Canol Road, Canol Pipeline and Alaska Highway in the early 1940s.

Unlike white soldiers, those Black soldiers were strictly segregated from local communities, said Ken Coates, a historian who has written about and researched the history of that period.

It was "an era of great stereotypes and all sorts of assumptions," Coates noted. The Army wouldn't let Black soldiers close to communities, instead putting them up in camps miles out of town.

Jason Warick/CBC

Still, encounters would happen between soldiers and community members — "party kind of relationships that were not terribly romantic," Coates said, as well as some romances and also more violent attacks.

"There were stories going up along the Mackenzie Valley, particularly in northern Alberta, of situations where there were children who came out of these relationships," Coates said.

Painting to heal, and to inform

After his years at residential school, Burke said the government sent him to a farm where he performed unpaid labour.

He eventually struck out on his own, starting a family and becoming a heavy machine operator.

He began working in the logging industry, and remained a contractor until he was 53.

That's when he went back to school for art.

He's straightforward about what his art means, and how it's generally received by others.

"Most of my paintings are social paintings, so most people don't particularly like them," he said.

"That's all interrelated with getting people to understand things, and also clearing my mind, too."

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.

Despite record profits, Suncor exec says Terra Nova subsidies 'crucial' to oil project's survival

Sat, February 18, 2023 

A major overhaul of the aging Terra Nova FPSO, pictured here this week after anchoring in Conception Bay following a trans-Atlantic voyage from Spain, is now in the final stages, according to Suncor Energy. (Suncor Energy - image credit)

The Calgary oil giant that's been making staggering profits is defending the decision to accept subsidies for the Terra Nova project in offshore Newfoundland, saying government support in 2021 was crucial to the project's survival.

"We are certainly deeply appreciative of all of the support from the provincial and the federal governments," Suncor's Shelley Powell told CBC News on Friday.

"This was absolutely crucial to making sure that we were able to secure a viable path forward for the Terra Nova. It generated and maintained ... 1,000-plus local long-term jobs that support the community and support this project going forward."

The Terra Nova is one of four mature oil fields in the offshore, along with Hibernia, White Rose and Hebron.

The massive floating production, storage and offloading vessel used in the field, the Terra Nova FPSO, arrived in Conception Bay this week following a trans-Atlantic crossing from a shipyard in Spain.

The vessel has undergone a top-to-bottom overhaul, financed largely by more than $200 million in cash from a federally funded — and provincially administered — industry recovery fund that was created in late 2020, during the height of the global pandemic. The province also agreed to forfeit future royalties valued at roughly $300 million.

Suncor

The deal was reached in June 2021 after weeks of uncertainty about whether the partners involved in Terra Nova would abandon the project, which hasn't produced oil since late 2019. It also came at a time when the oil industry was reeling from a collapse in global markets as the pandemic hammered the travel industry, and oil prices had cratered.

The government bailout was accompanied by an ownership shakeup in the Terra Nova, with four of the seven partners exiting, and the remaining three — Suncor, Husky (since acquired by Cenovus) and Murphy Oil — expanding their equity stakes.

The 11th-hour deal saved the Terra Nova, and it was towed to Spain more than a year ago for what's called an asset life extension, which will allow for another 10 years of production, with an estimated 80 million barrels of oil remaining in the field.

The vessel is undergoing some final work in Conception Bay, and must now be inspected by regulators to make sure it can operate safely. Suncor has said it expects production to resume between April and June.

"We are all super excited to see Terra Nova back at home in Canadian waters," said Powell, who acknowledged schedule and budget setbacks for the overhaul.

"As this work progresses, you find things that maybe you hadn't planned for and they just take time. We wanted to make sure we were doing all the things necessary that so when the vessel goes back into the field, and into production, we're confident in its ability to operate safely and reliably."

Meanwhile, the economic landscape has changed dramatically since the government bailout for the Terra Nova was finalized, and oil companies like Suncor are now reaping unprecedented profits because of higher oil prices. Suncor reported this week, for example, that it earned $2.74 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Newfoundland and Labrador's Energy Minister, Andrew Parsons, told the Canadian Press "it's enough to make you ball up your fists."

He added that "it's frustrating when you're hearing about how a project might die, and then they roll out a multi-billion-dollar profit. But that's the nature of it. We have to find a way to do business with them."

Suncor is the only oil company with an ownership interest in all four offshore fields, and Shelley Powell said the company is deeply committed to the province.

"It is a key component of our exploration and production strategy," she said.

NDP MP calls for hate speech law to combat residential school 'denialism'


Sat, February 18, 2023 

A growing memorial outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in B.C. following the May 2021 discovery of suspected unmarked graves. (Ben Nelms/CBC - image credit)

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Some Indigenous academics and activists say they've become the targets of a growing backlash against reports of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites — and they want Parliament to do something about it.

They say they're being flooded with emails, letters and phone calls from people pushing back against the reports of suspected graves and skewing the history of the government-funded, church-run institutions that worked to assimilate more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children for more than a century.

They call it "residential school denialism" and describe it as an attempt to downplay, twist and dismiss the facts to undermine public confidence in the Indigenous reconciliation project.

NDP MP Leah Gazan, who got the House of Commons last October to unanimously recognize that genocide occurred at residential schools, now wants to take the issue a step further by drafting legislation to outlaw attempts to deny that genocide and make false assertions about residential schools.

"Denying genocide is a form of hate speech," said Gazan, who represents the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

"That kind of speech is violent and re-traumatizes those who attended residential school."

Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press

Gazan's proposal is causing controversy, even among those who want the facts about residential schools widely known. But the Office of Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said he would be interested in reviewing the proposed legislation.

"Residential school denialism attempts to hide the horrors that took place in these institutions," Miller's office told CBC News.

"It seeks to deny survivors and their families the truth, and distorts Canadians' understanding of our shared history."

'People are responding ... with fear'

More than 130 residential schools operated across the country from roughly 1883 until 1997. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found the federal government created them for the purpose of separating Indigenous children from their families and indoctrinating them into the culture of the dominant Euro-Christian Canadian society. The goal, said the commission, was to weaken Indigenous family ties and cultural linkages.

The commission said that many children at the schools were subjected to physical and sexual abuse. It described conditions at the schools as "institutionalized child neglect."

Michelle Good, author of the upcoming book Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada, said she believes denialism is rooted in Canada's shifting power dynamics.

"Indigenous people are experiencing a very important renaissance, a resurgence," Good said.

"As we are returning to our strength as nations, as peoples, people are responding, I think, with fear."

Silk Sellinger Photography

Good, who also wrote the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award-winning novel Five Little Indians, said declaring denialism hate speech would send a powerful message that the era of oppression and racism is over.

"My mother watched her friend Lily haemorrhage to death from tuberculosis at the Onion Lake Residential School," said Good, a member of Red Pheasant Cree Nation, 153 km northwest of Saskatoon.

"To have people respond to our lived experience as though it never happened is devastating, and our country should be beyond that at this point."

Busting myths

Crystal Gail Fraser, a Gwichyà Gwich'in assistant professor of history and Native Studies at the University of Alberta, said she would welcome the opportunity to engage in fair dialogue with denialists.

She said she receives messages every week from people arguing that residential schools were established with good intentions, or that Indigenous communities are concocting claims about unmarked graves. Some of these messages, she said, come from missionaries working overseas.

"For people who do this as a part of their jobs, their professional lives, that is very disturbing," Fraser said.

"How is it that we can better educate everyday Canadians so we don't have to be at the point where we're directing efforts to bust more myths about Indigenous peoples in Canada, and we can really redirect and return our attention to the truth and reconciliation part?"

Submitted by Kisha Supernant

Kisha Supernant, director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology at the University of Alberta, said she received an email challenging her own family history after she identified 169 potential graves through ground-penetrating radar in March 2022 at the former Grouard Indian Residential School in northern Alberta.

Supernant, who is Métis, also shared messages with CBC from people threatening to dig up suspected burial sites.

"I'm already dealing with the emotional toil of spending my time walking over potential graves of children who went missing, and then for that to be called into question makes the work a lot more challenging," she said.

Supernant said expanding hate speech law to cover residential school denialism is an idea that should be explored but she doesn't think it will silence the "denialists."

"If nations decide to exhume, which some may, and they do find the bodies of children, they will still not be enough for denialists," she said.

"They'll still find ways to excuse it. Because it's not actually about the facts."

'This is totalitarianism'

Some academics have experienced consequences over their stances and statements on residential schools.

Frances Widdowson was fired last year as a professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, in part for her criticism of what she called "dominant residential school narratives."

A speech she planned to give at the University of Lethbridge last month was also cancelled after students protested.

She said using hate speech laws to criminalize some opinions and views on residential schools would cross a dangerous line.

"This is totalitarianism," Widdowson said.

Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press

Unlike the House of Commons, Widdowson doesn't believe the institutions were genocidal. She gained notoriety for saying the institutions gave Indigenous children an education that "normally they wouldn't have received."

But Widdowson said she's not a "denialist."

She said she acknowledges residential schools caused harm and children died, but takes issue with the reports of possible unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site in B.C., which she said caused "hysteria."

"The only way that you are going to determine whether in fact there are burials there is to do excavations on that site," Widdowson said.

"I'm completely, you know, open to the fact that I could be misguided and wrong. But the answer to that is not to make what I'm saying illegal, which is ridiculous."

Countering 'denialism' with education

Richard Moon, a law professor at the University of Windsor who specializes in freedom of expression, said any law targeting residential school denialism would invite a Charter of Rights challenge.

"We want to be very careful about regulating claims about historical events — even if we think those claims are misguided, ignorant or hurtful," he said.

"The Supreme Court has said only a very narrow category of extreme speech is caught by hate speech laws, and that's all they should catch in order to reconcile the regulation of hate speech with our commitment to freedom of expression under the charter."

Eldon Yellowhorn, professor and Indigenous Studies department chair at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C., said he knows that many sceptics are demanding that suspected unmarked graves be dug up for proof.

He said that's controversial because it crosses many taboos about the treatment of the dead in Indigenous cultures.

"People like myself are working hard on finding a resolution to this and to making the evidence stronger so that we can be more confident in the statements that we make," said Yellowhorn, who is from the Piikani Nation, 200 km south of Calgary.

"You can't legislate stupidity away."

Submitted by Sean Carleton

Sean Carleton, an assistant professor in the departments of history and Indigenous studies at the University of Manitoba, said he doesn't think hate speech legislation would be the best approach either.

"It takes the responsibility out of Canadians' hands to challenge the people in their lives," Carleton said.

"It risks … giving denialists more of a platform to say, you know, look at the heavy-handed approach of the government. What do they not want us, Canadians, to really understand?"

Carleton said his preference is for governments, churches, schools and community associations to counter lies and misinformation about residential schools with education.

"We need to get to that point where denialism is seen as people who deny gravity or say the earth is flat," he said.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.

Debt-laden African countries charged 'extortionate' rates, U.N. chief says



Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres receives the University of Lisbon 2020 prize

Sat, 18 February 2023 
By Dawit Endeshaw

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - African countries are getting a raw deal from the international financial system which charges them "extortionate" interest rates, the U.N. chief said on Saturday, as he announced $250 million in crisis funding, including for famine risk on the continent.

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres wants far-reaching reforms to the structure of international finance to serve the needs of developing countries more efficiently, he told the opening ceremony of the annual African Union summit in Ethiopia.

"The global financial system routinely denies (developing countries) debt relief and concessional financing while charging extortionate interest rates," he said.

The U.N. will spend $250 million from its emergency fund, the largest ever allocation, to respond to several crises around the world, including helping communities at risk of famine in Africa, Guterres later told a news briefing.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed many poor countries into debt distress as they were expected to continue servicing their obligations in spite of the massive shock to their finances.

Public debt ratios in sub-Saharan Africa are at their highest in more than two decades, the International Monetary Fund said last year.

Governments on the continent, including Ethiopia, sought debt restructuring deals under an IMF programme to help them navigate the crisis, but conclusion of the process has been delayed.

Others, which have not sought to restructure their debt, like Kenya, have seen their debt sustainability indicators worsen after the pandemic hit their finances.

"African countries cannot... climb the development ladder with one hand tied behind their backs," Guterres said.

Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed echoed the call.

"Nearly all of us want to put our economies back on a growth trajectory but this will not happen without sufficient restructuring to make our external debt sustainable," he said.

The summit, which brings together leaders from the 55 African nations, is also focusing on deepening food and security crises on the continent.

Armed conflict from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa and the impacts of droughts and floods have driven ever more Africans from their homes.

Hunger, driven by the impact of the armed conflicts and also extreme weather that scientists have linked to climate change, has also worsened in several nations.

Somalia is on the verge of famine after five failed rainy seasons, with hundreds of thousands of people suffering catastrophic food shortages.

"We need to critically assess why one third of the hungry people in the world are in our continent," Abiy said.

(Reporting by Dawit Endeshaw in Addis Ababa and Duncan Miriri in Nairobi; Writing by Duncan Miriri; Editing by Jane Merriman)

King praises children for ‘raising the alarm over climate change’

The King co-authors children's book on climate change

Sam Russell, PA
Fri, 17 February 2023 

The King said he was pleased to see children raising the alarm over climate change and calling for big changes, in a book afterword that he wrote before the death of his mother the Queen.

Charles penned the personal message, to appear in A Ladybird Book: Climate Change, in summer last year while he was still the Prince of Wales.

The Queen died on September 8.

In the afterword to the book, to be published next month, the King writes: “Ever since I was a young teenager I have been deeply worried about the way we have shaped our world.”

In another excerpt from the afterword, he writes: “I am pleased to see that children across the world … are now raising the alarm and calling for big changes to happen.

“Their efforts have emphasised the importance of caring about what life will be like in the future – there is a lesson in this for us all.”

The former Prince of Wales has written the afterword to A Ladybird Book: Climate Change (Jane Barlow/ PA)

The King is a constitutional monarch who must remain politically neutral.

Charles has co-authored A Ladybird Book: Climate Change, which is a child-friendly title adapted from the Ladybird Expert volume published in 2017.

The text has been updated with new climate data, an additional spread on the youth climate change movement as well as the new afterword from the former Prince of Wales, and is illustrated by Aleesha Nandhra.

Co-author Professor Emily Shuckburgh OBE, director of Cambridge University’s climate change initiative Cambridge Zero, said: “Children today have only known a planet ravaged by climate change.

“This book explains what is happening, why it is happening and what we can all do about it.

“Children are our future, and this book is about their future.

“As a scientist who has studied the climate from pole-to-pole, and as a parent with two young daughters, I believe there is no more important issue to inform and educate young people about.”

Co-author Dr Tony Juniper CBE, an environmentalist, said: “It is vital we take action now to avoid the worst consequences of global heating, and part of our plan must include empowering young people.

The King planting a lime tree near the Tea House in the Buckingham Palace garden (Jonathan Brady/PA)

“This is not about passing the problem to them, but helping to ensure they are armed with the facts and thus in a stronger position to urge that changes are made to protect their future.

“There has been no more effective or committed champion of this cause than the former Prince of Wales and I am sure this book and his words will help to keep things moving in the right direction.”

Libby Walden, commissioning editor at Ladybird, said: “Ladybird has a long history of making non-fiction accessible for children with our mini hardback series.

“When the team were thinking about new titles and what topics children might be interested in, climate change and the importance of protecting our world was something we really wanted to explore.

“We are incredibly proud to be publishing A Ladybird Book: Climate Change and hope that it informs, engages and empowers young people.”

A Ladybird Book: Climate Change will be published on March 9 in Ladybird Hardback, priced £6.99.

Off camera, Fox hosts doubted 2020 election fraud claims

RANDALL CHASE
Fri, 17 February 2023 

 A headline about President Donald Trump is displayed outside Fox News studios, on Nov. 28, 2018, in New York. Attorneys for the cable news giant argued in a counterclaim unsealed, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023, that a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News by Dominion Voting Systems over the network’s coverage of the 2020 presidential election is an assault on the First Amendment.

 (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File) 

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — To millions of viewers, Fox News hosts gave allies of former President Donald Trump a platform to champion false claims that he lost the 2020 election because of voter fraud. To one another, they expressed doubts about the claims and mocked the people making them.

Private exchanges between Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, and other network bigwigs — including the chairman of Fox Corporation, Rupert Murdoch — show a wide chasm between what the network promoted in primetime and the doubts that its stars held behind the camera, according to new court filings in a defamation lawsuit being waged by a company whose voting systems were regularly maligned on air.

“Sidney Powell is lying” about having evidence for election fraud, Carlson said via text on Nov. 16, 2020 to a Fox News producer, referring to one of Trump’s lawyers.

Ingraham texted Carlson that Powell is “a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy,” referring to the former New York mayor and Trump supporter Rudy Giuliani.

These and other internal communications were included in a redacted brief filed Thursday by attorneys for Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corporation, for $1.6 billion.

In a deposition, host Sean Hannity said “that whole narrative that Sidney was pushing, I did not believe it for one second,” according to Dominion’s filing.

Murdoch, meanwhile, in a Nov. 19 email, described what he saw in a press conference that day featuring Giuliani and Powell as “Really crazy stuff. And damaging.”

Dominion's legal case rests on its belief that Fox News employees deliberately amplified false claims that the company had changed votes in the 2020 election, and that Fox provided a platform for guests to make false and defamatory statements.

Attorneys for Fox argued in a counterclaim unsealed Thursday that the lawsuit is an assault on the First Amendment. They said Dominion has advanced “novel defamation theories” and is seeking a “staggering” damage figure aimed at generating headlines, chilling protected speech and enriching Dominion’s private equity owner, Staple Street Capital Partners.

“Dominion brought this lawsuit to punish FNN for reporting on one of the biggest stories of the day — allegations by the sitting President of the United States and his surrogates that the 2020 election was affected by fraud,” the counterclaim states. “The very fact of those allegations was newsworthy.”

Fox attorneys have noted that Carlson repeatedly questioned Powell’s claims in his broadcasts. “When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her,” Carlson told viewers on Nov. 19, 2020.

Fox attorneys say Dominion’s own public relations firm expressed skepticism in December 2020 as to whether the network’s coverage was defamatory. They also point to an email from Oct. 30, 2020, just days before the election, in which Dominion’s director of product strategy and security complained that the company’s products were “just riddled with bugs.”

In their counterclaim, Fox attorneys wrote that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.

“Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would be illusory if the prevailing side in a public controversy could sue the press for giving a forum to the losing side," Fox attorneys wrote.

Fox attorneys warn that threatening the company with a $1.6 billion judgment will cause other media outlets to think twice about what they report.

Responses by both sides to the briefs made public on Thursday remain under seal. Fox has said Dominion's filing includes “cherry-picked quotes stripped of key context,” and that it has refused to allow Fox to make its response to Dominion's brief public. Attorneys for Fox and Dominion told The Associated Press on Friday that responses to the briefs will remain under seal until Feb. 27.

Dominion on Friday filed its own challenge to the redactions in the briefs, including its own. “Dominion’s position is that nothing in these three briefs warrants confidential treatment,” attorneys for the company wrote, adding that all redactions were done at Fox's request.

If either side can persuade Superior Court Judge Eric Davis to grant summary judgment in its favor, the case will end without a jury trial. If not, the trial is scheduled to begin in mid-April.

In its 192-page brief, Dominion said the judge should rule in its favor because “no reasonable juror could find in Fox’s favor on each element of Dominion’s defamation claim.” Dominion attorneys also assert that no reasonable juror could find in favor of Fox’s “neutral reportage” and “fair report” defenses.

“Recounts and audits conducted by election officials across the U.S. repeatedly confirmed the election’s outcome, including specifically that Dominion’s machines accurately counted votes,” Dominion’s filing states.

Fox News attorneys argue the network’s coverage and commentary are not defamatory and that there is no evidence the hosts had any malicious intent behind what they said about Dominion — an important legal standard in First Amendment cases.

Davis ruled last month that, for the purposes of the defamation claims, he will consider Dominion to be a public figure. That means Dominion must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the Fox defendants acted with actual malice or reckless disregard for the truth.