Latest news with #Declaration
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Freestone County judge issues Disaster Declaration
FREESTONE COUNTY, Texas (FOX 44) – Freestone County Judge Linda Grant has signed a Disaster Declaration due to the recent severe storms and flooding events. According to the declaration ordered on Friday, June 13, Freestone County suffered widespread and severe damage, injury, and loss of property resulting from severe storms and flooding which occurred on May 28. The events included heavy rainfall, flash flooding, river flooding, large hail, and hazardous wind gusts throughout the county. Judge Grant has determined extraordinary measures must be taken to alleviate suffering and to protect or rehabilitate property. You can view the Disaster Declaration below. dd-release-1Download Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Daily Record
11-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Record
North Lanarkshire Council backs Fair Tax Week by signing responsible tax declaration
Fair Tax Week is a recognition of the businesses and organisations that are proud to promote responsible tax conduct, and a celebration of the positive contribution this makes to society. North Lanarkshire Council has committed to operating responsible tax conduct as part of Fair Tax Week which runs until June 15. As part of the commitment, the council will continue to promote fair tax practices to suppliers and local businesses. Fair Tax Week is a recognition of the businesses and organisations that are proud to promote responsible tax conduct, and a celebration of the positive contribution this makes to society. Signing the Declaration commits cities, towns and districts to pursuing exemplary tax conduct in their affairs, require greater transparency from suppliers and join calls for more meaningful powers to tackle tax avoidance amongst suppliers when buying goods and services. Councillor Andrew Duffy-Lawson, Finance and Resources Convener is urging suppliers and local businesses to engage with ethical tax conduct after the council agreed a motion in June 2024 to support fair tax conduct. He said: 'We know that there are multi-national companies who use loopholes in the tax system to avoid paying what they owe. 'As a council that receives significant public funding, we must recognise that tax evasion means less funding to support vital public services such as education, roads, health and social care and much-needed support for local communities. 'It's imperative that we lead by example to ensure that our services continue to support the most vulnerable people in our communities, particularly with public spending being under such immense pressure. 'As a real Living Wage employer that is committed to fairness and equality, Fair Tax Week is an opportunity to promote greater transparency around responsible tax conduct among our suppliers and contractors, including implementing IR35 robustly, as well as encouraging local businesses to pay their fair share of tax.' A recent poll from The Fair Tax Foundation found more than two-thirds (68 per cent) of Scots agree that the government and local councils should consider a company's ethics and how they pay their tax as well as value for money and quality of service provided, when undertaking procurement. At the same time, research has found that c.15% of public contracts in Scotland have been won by companies with links to tax havens. However, current law significantly restricts the ability of councils to either penalise poor tax conduct or reward good tax conduct, when buying goods or services. Councillor Duffy-Lawson added: 'We are also calling for urgent reform of EU, UK and Scots law to enable local authorities to better penalise poor tax conduct and reward good tax conduct through their procurement policies. That way, tax practices will improve and local services can be better funded.'
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler Calls on California Governor Gavin Newsom to Request Disaster Declaration for Small Businesses Impacted by L.A. Riots
Agency Requests Authorization to Deliver Aid to Victims of Looting, Property Destruction WASHINGTON, June 09, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Kelly Loeffler, Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), called on California Governor Gavin Newsom to request an SBA Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Declaration to authorize the agency to begin delivering urgent assistance to small businesses across Los Angeles that have been ransacked by rioters since civil unrest began last week. The agency stands ready to deliver critical aid to innocent American victims – whose storefronts have been looted and destroyed by the migrant mob that is wreaking havoc in defense of criminal illegal aliens. 'We're giving Gavin Newsom the opportunity to stop siding with criminal illegal aliens and start siding with law-abiding Americans – many of whom have lost everything to the violent and destructive riots across Los Angeles,' said SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler. 'The migrant mob has looted stores, destroyed storefronts, and committed criminal acts of vandalism against our small businesses. Although local leaders are allowing Los Angeles to burn, federal partners are ready to help American citizens rebuild – and we will do so, as soon as the Governor answers their call for help.' For the safety of employees and small business owners, Administrator Loeffler recently announced that SBA would be relocating its Regional Office out of Los Angeles due to the city's refusal to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Regional Office is located mere steps from the violence that continues to occur in downtown Los Angeles – and where U.S. Marines have been deployed to restore order. The SBA has provided the state of California with all relevant information needed to request an EIDL Declaration – which will allow small businesses in Los Angeles to apply for low-interest, long-term loans of up to $2 million to help them rebuild following the catastrophic violence of this weekend. Given the urgency of the situation, the SBA is committed to approving any such disaster declaration as soon as it is submitted by Governor Newsom. CONTACT: SBA HQ Press Team U.S. Small Business Administration press_office@ in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
NIH employees publish ‘Bethesda Declaration' in dissent of Trump administration policies
In October 2020, two months before Covid-19 vaccines would become available in the US, Stanford health policy professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and two colleagues published an open letter calling for a contrarian approach to managing the risks of the pandemic: protecting the most vulnerable while allowing others largely to resume normal life, aiming to obtain herd immunity through infection with the virus. They called it the Great Barrington Declaration, for the Massachusetts town where they signed it. Backlash to it was swift, with the director-general of the World Health Organization calling the idea of allowing a dangerous new virus to sweep through unprotected populations 'unethical.' Bhattacharya later testified before Congress that it – and he – immediately became targets of suppression and censorship by those leading scientific agencies. Now, Bhattacharya is the one in charge, and staffers at the agency he leads, the US National Institutes of Health, published their own letter of dissent, taking issue with what they see as the politicization of research and destruction of scientific progress under the Trump administration. They called it the Bethesda Declaration, for the location of the NIH. 'We hope you will welcome this dissent, which we modeled after your Great Barrington Declaration,' the staffers wrote. The letter was signed by more than 300 employees across the biomedical research agency, according to the non-profit organization Stand Up for Science, which also posted it; while many employees signed anonymously because of fears of retaliation, nearly 100 - from graduate students to division chiefs - signed by name. It comes the day before Bhattacharya is due to testify before Congress once more, in a budget hearing to be held Tuesday by the Senate appropriations committee. It's just the latest sign of strife from inside the NIH, where some staff last month staged a walkout of a townhall with Bhattacharya to protest working conditions and an inability to discuss them with the director. 'If we don't speak up, we allow continued harm to research participants and public health in America and across the globe,' said Dr. Jenna Norton, a program officer at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and a lead organizer of the Declaration, in a news release from Stand Up for Science. She emphasized she was speaking in a personal capacity, not on behalf of the NIH. The letter, which the staffers said they also sent to US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and members of Congress who oversee the NIH, urged Bhattacharya to 'restore grants delayed or terminated for political reasons so that life-saving science can continue,' citing work in areas including health disparities, Covid-19, health impacts of climate change and others. They cited findings by two scientists that said about 2,100 NIH grants for about $9.5 billion have been terminated since the second Trump administration began. The NIH budget had been about $48 billion annually, and the Trump administration has proposed cutting it next year by about 40%. The research terminations 'throw away years of hard work and millions of dollars,' the NIH staffers wrote. 'Ending a $5 million research study when it is 80% complete does not save $1 million, it wastes $4 million.' They also urged Bhattacharya to reverse a policy that aims to implement a new, and lower, flat 15% rate for paying for indirect costs of research at universities, which supports shared lab space, buildings, instruments and other infrastructure, as well as the firing of essential NIH staff. Those who wrote the Bethesda Declaration were joined Monday by outside supporters, in a second letter posted by Stand Up for Science and signed by members of the public, including more than a dozen Nobel Prize-winning scientists. 'We urge NIH and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) leadership to work with NIH staff to return the NIH to its mission and to abandon the strategy of using NIH as a tool for achieving political goals unrelated to that mission,' they wrote. The letter called for the grant-making process to be conducted by scientifically trained NIH staff, guided by rigorous peer review, not by 'anonymous individuals outside of NIH.' It also challenged assertions put forward by Kennedy, who often compares today's health outcomes with those around the time his uncle John F. Kennedy was president, in the early 1960s. 'Since 1960, the death rate due to heart disease has been cut in half, going from 560 deaths per 100,000 people to approximately 230 deaths per 100,000 today,' they wrote. 'From 1960 to the present day, the five-year survival rate for childhood leukemia has increased nearly 10-fold, to over 90% for some forms. In 1960, the rate of measles infection was approximately 250 cases per 100,000 people compared with a near zero rate now (at least until recently).' They acknowledged there's still much work to do, including addressing obesity, diabetes and opioid dependency, 'but,' they wrote, 'glamorizing a mythical past while ignoring important progress made through biomedical research does not enhance the health of the American people.' Support from the NIH, they argued, made the US 'the internationally recognized hub for biomedical research and training,' leading to major advances in improving human health. 'I've never heard anybody say, 'I'm just so frustrated that the government is spending so much money on cancer research, or trying to address Alzheimer's,' ' said Dr. Jeremy Berg, who organized the letter of outside support and previously served as director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at the NIH. 'Health concerns are a universal human concern,' Berg told CNN. 'The NIH system is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but has been unbelievably productive in terms of generating progress on specific diseases.'
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
From Declaration to Action: Advancing Global Graft Fight under IAACA Steer
HONG KONG, May 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- In May last year, the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (IAACA), a 180-member-strong international anti-corruption organization currently headed by Danny Woo Ying-ming, Commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) of Hong Kong, China adopted the "Hong Kong Declaration on Strengthening International Cooperation in Preventing and Fighting Corruption" (the Declaration). The Declaration outlines four key areas in which anti-corruption agencies (ACAs) are encouraged to strengthen their efforts: international collaboration, capacity building, public engagement as well as research and development. Over the past year, ACAs around the world has significantly advanced their efforts in the aforesaid areas. At the IAACA Executive Committee meeting chaired by the ICAC in May this year, IAACA Executive Committee members updated each other on their respective accomplishments since the adoption of the Declaration. "The first anniversary of the Declaration is a pivotal milestone which underscores the collective commitment of IAACA members. Members' achievements and contributions highlight the significant strides made in combating and preventing corruption globally since the adoption of the Hong Kong Declaration," Hong Kong ICAC Commissioner and IAACA President Danny Woo Ying-ming said. In the past year, many ACAs have strengthened cooperation in criminal matters such as assisting other jurisdictions in preventing and detecting the transfer of corruption proceeds, recovering illicit assets, and denying safe havens to fugitives. Individual ACAs also entered into memoranda of understanding with various counterparts to enhance anti-corruption cooperation for investigations, prosecutions, etc. ICAC, for example, has signed MOUs with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and anti-corruption agencies from seven countries. Another effective initiative for international collaboration was the strong partnership and active participation in global international organisations and platforms. Beyond IAACA, ACAs have worked closely together through initiatives such as the Global Operational Network of Anti-Corruption Law Enforcement Authorities (GlobE Network), ASEAN Parties Against Corruption, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, European Contact-Point Network against Corruption, G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, etc. During the year, ACAs attended various events hosted by these international organisations around the world and took the opportunities to exchange graft-fighting knowledge, experience and insights. Capacity building is another pillar of the Declaration. It calls on ACAs to assist other jurisdictions to enhance anti-corruption capacity through trainings, exchanges, workshops as well as partnership projects. In this aspect, the Hong Kong ICAC launched the Hong Kong International Academy Against Corruption in 2024 and conducted over 30 international training programmes, benefitting more than 2,600 participants from over 70 countries. The anti-corruption academies in the Special Investigating Unit of South Africa, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission of Malaysia and the Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority of Saudi Arabia also provided training programmes to assist other jurisdictions in enhancing anti-corruption capacities. ACAs, under the Hong Kong Declaration, have also implemented diverse strategies to engage the society in fighting corruption, enhance public awareness and promote workplace integrity. Different awareness-raising campaigns organized by ACAs through social media publicity, online activities, school campaigns, large-scale anti-corruption events for citizens had effectively encouraged a culture of integrity and legality. In 2024, marking its 50th anniversary, ICAC hosted community events, unveiled Café "1974", renovated its exhibition hall with interactive exhibits, and conducted multimedia campaigns that amassed 27 million online views. The Anti-Corruption Bureau of Brunei Darussalam has trained public officers as anti-corruption ambassadors to educate colleagues and provide guidance. The Corruption Practices Investigation Bureau of Singapore has developed teaching kits and books for teenagers, and launched the Anti-Corruption Badge Programme for uniformed groups. The Financial Crimes Commission of Mauritius has also introduced the secondary school campaign to encourage youth engagement in financial crime prevention. The Hong Kong Declaration also advocates the development of methodologies and indicators to measure corruption risks and trends. For example, the National Transparency Authority of Greece conducted a nationwide public opinion survey to collect qualitative and quantitative insights on corruption experiences, informing evidence-based policy decisions. Similarly, the Integrity Authority of Hungary is developing a methodology to measure corruption among the Hungarian population. In Italy, the National Anti-Corruption Authority has developed 70 risk indicators and is refining its ability to predict potential corruption by integrating statistical-econometric models and machine-learning techniques and extending the system to other databases. In addition, to strengthen investigative and preventive measures, ACAs had integrated advanced technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, in their initiatives. In Hong Kong, ICAC has developed AI-powered tools to assist officers in formulating corruption prevention advice based on corruption prevention reports, consultations, and publications. These tools also provide real-time guidance to the public and answer inquiries about ICAC and anti-corruption laws. Countries such as Italy, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia had also established digital systems for public procurement and contract management. "Efforts by IAACA members have not only reinforced their collective commitment but also facilitated the exchange of valuable experiences and best practices across diverse regions and organizations. Those collaborative initiatives align with the Hong Kong Declaration and are essential for ensuring the long-term effectiveness of anti-corruption measures, ultimately cultivating a global culture of integrity and good governance," Mr Woo said. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption
