Latest news with #FPG
Forbes
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Forbes
Trump Admin Proposes Rolling Back Coal Mining Safety Protections
Photo by Curtis Wainscott/FPG/On June 12th, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement announced a proposal to roll back federal guidelines to investigate reports of potential workplace dangers in mines. Mining remains a dangerous occupation for American workers. In 2023, forty people died in mining-related workplace incidents in the United States. Nine of these fatalities were connected to coal mines. Even after a miner retires, he or she may struggle with chronic health issues like black lung, COPD, and lung cancer. Last year, the Department of the Interior amended their policies to require prompt inspections of mining safety concerns are reported. In the past, many miners continued to work for weeks in dangerous conditions even after they had reported hazards or safety violations. Miners or environmentalists reported that some state officials seemed to shrug off reported workplace or pollution violations. Since mining safety investigations were largely left to the states to oversee, citizens who filed complaints were left with little recourse when reports stalled or went unaddressed. In 2024, the Ten-Day Notice rule was amended. Currently, if a state authority fails to promptly address reported safety concerns, OSMRE can initiate a federal investigation. The Ten-Day Notice Rule requires the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) to inform a state regulatory authority about violations of work permits, safety regulations, or other potentially dangerous issues in mining facilities. Then, the state regulatory authority has ten days to respond to the potential violation. The 2024 additions to the Ten-Day Notice Rule aim to hold state officials and mining companies accountable when they are expected to address potential workplace dangers. Adam G. Suess, Acting Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management, argued that the 2024 amendment created unnecessary restrictions for state officials. "We're cutting red tape, restoring clarity and respecting states' right to lead. Federal oversight doesn't mean federal interference,' Suess said in the June 12th proposal to restrict the Ten-Day Notice Rule. Suess is not the only person who has critiqued the addition of federal inspections to the Ten-Day Notice Rule. In 2024, fourteen attorneys general sued the OSMRE in an attempt to reign in the new safety and reporting guidelines. However, advocates believe that the additions to the Ten-Day Notice Rule save lives and protect the environment. Bonnie Swinford is the Beyond Coal campaign strategist at the Sierra Club. 'Without the Ten Day Notice Rule, toxic spills will fester, dangerous mines will go unrepaired, and at the end of the day, the coal companies responsible will get to wipe their hands and walk away from the messes they created," Swinford said in a press release published in Appalachian Voices. Appalachian coal miners encounter some of the highest levels of injuries and fatalities. Willie Dodson, the Appalachian Voices Coal Impacts Program Manager, echoed Swinford's concerns. 'This rule, in more or less its current form, has helped residents of coal mining communities ensure that their corporate neighbors do not pollute the air and water,' said Dodson. 'The administration's rewrite of this rule will do nothing but eliminate protections for everyday people in order to benefit those who profit from destructive, polluting, reckless coal mining practices.'
New Paper
12-06-2025
- Business
- New Paper
FairPrice shoppers can buy discounted essentials, electronics with over 400 vouchers until September
Consumers can purchase selected daily essentials and electronics at discounted prices at FairPrice outlets from June 12 to Sept 10 with the return of its Save Every Day campaign. Over the next three months, shoppers can save more than $1,000 by using over 400 vouchers on the FairPrice Group (FPG) app, the supermarket giant said in a statement on June 12. Physical vouchers are also available for collection at all FairPrice, FairPrice Finest, FairPrice Xtra and Unity outlets. The return of the campaign is part of the group's ongoing celebrations to commemorate SG60. There are over 100 SG60 vouchers which cover items such as rice, oil, milk and chocolates. The supermarket giant has also curated exclusive online vouchers for electronics from popular brands like Samsung, Xiaomi and Jisulife. To enjoy the discounts, customers need to apply the digital vouchers when making payment using the FPG app, or scan the barcode on physical vouchers at check-out. There is no limit on the number of voucher redemptions per customer, and multiple vouchers can be used in a single transaction throughout the 13-week campaign period. All vouchers can be combined with existing discounts, including the supermarket giant's weekly discount schemes for Seniors, Pioneer Generation, Merdeka Generation, and Community Health Assist Scheme Blue and Orange cardholders. In 2024, the Save Every Day Campaign delivered close to $1.4 million in savings to customers, the highest savings since its launch in 2021.
Straits Times
12-06-2025
- Business
- Straits Times
FairPrice shoppers can buy discounted essentials, electronics with over 400 vouchers until September
The return of the campaign is part of the group's its ongoing celebrations to commemorate SG60. PHOTO: ST FILE FairPrice shoppers can buy discounted essentials, electronics with over 400 vouchers until September SINGAPORE - Consumers can purchase selected daily essentials and electronics at discounted prices at FairPrice outlets from June 12 to Sept 10 with the return of its Save Every Day campaign. Over the next three months, shoppers can save more than $1,000 by using over 400 vouchers on the FairPrice Group (FPG) app, the supermarket giant said in a statement on June 12. Physical vouchers are also available for collection at all FairPrice, FairPrice Finest, FairPrice Xtra and Unity outlets. The return of the campaign is part of the group's ongoing celebrations to commemorate SG60 . There are over 100 SG60 vouchers which cover items such as rice, oil, milk and chocolates. The supermarket giant has also curated exclusive online vouchers for electronics from popular brands like Samsung, Xiaomi and Jisulife. To enjoy the discounts, customers need to apply the digital vouchers when making payment using the FPG app, or scan the barcode on physical vouchers at check-out. There is no limit on the number of voucher redemptions per customer, and multiple vouchers can be used in a single transaction throughout the 13-week campaign period. All vouchers can be combined with existing discounts, including the supermarket giant's weekly discount schemes for Seniors, Pioneer Generation, Merdeka Generation, and Community Health Assist Scheme Blue and Orange cardholders. In 2024, the Save Every Day Campaign delivered close to $1.4 million in savings to customers, the highest savings since its launch in 2021. Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
New Statesman
11-06-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Letter of the week: Building Britain's future
Photo by FPG / Archive Photos / Getty Images Anoosh Chakelian's Cover Story (6 June) depressingly explains how poorly houses are being built in the UK and how few protections buyers have. Setting this against the government's aim of building 1.5 million homes in its first term, the problem is even more concerning. House-building needs to be changed to meet that target and create better houses. We need to look more creatively at high-density housing to avoid acres of identikit suburbs. (One model could be the Montreal development, Habitat 67: rather than towers it formed a landscape of housing units, hills and vales.) We also need bigger houses to reduce the number of moves, so people can stay longer and build communities. Cladding in timber and materials other than brick would reduce cement manufacture and lock in carbon. Such changes would be a true revolution, make real change and reconfigure housing for a better future. It might even enable the government to build 1.5 million homes, some of them council houses. We need homes for the future, not houses looking back to the past. David Cockayne, Cheshire Home to roost Congratulations to Anoosh Chakelian for highlighting the lousy quality of much of our new housing (Cover Story, 6 June). We need to build many more new homes, particularly affordable ones. But the assumption that weakening the planning system will magic up the homes we need is deeply flawed. Planning liberalisation, promoted over the past 20 years by developer-funded think tanks, is viewed as a panacea by many on the centre-left. But as Chakelian suggests, we need more planning and better-enforced building standards, not less. Let's build – but let's build homes people will want to live in and ones we can be proud in years to come. Shaun Spiers, executive director, Green Alliance Stocks and scares The UK government, with its own currency, need not 'balance the books' (Leader, 6 June), as the late economist John Weeks and others have made clear. The 2008 crisis, for example, was born not from public debt but from the unbridled growth in private-sector debt. The warning sign was the acceleration in lending. Refusing to provide 'greater funding' is a political choice by Rachel Reeves. The Treasury has acknowledged there is no aspect of the government's banking arrangements that can prevent government expenditure from being realised once it has been authorised by parliament – with its large majority, it should be easy for Labour. The British government is not exposed to the risks of 'running out of money', defaulting on debt obligations, the sentiments of bond markets or a need to reduce levels of government debt below those demanded by the economy. The government can and should spend to invest. Angela Rayner's housing project would be a good place to start. David Murray, Wallington, Surrey In defence of Healey Jason Cowley rightly praises John Healey's personal integrity and his commitment, manifest in the Defence Review, to improving the living conditions and terms of service personnel (Newsmaker, 6 June). That is both right and fundamental: if service personnel are not looked after, they will – as they are at the moment – leave at a faster rate than recruitment can replenish. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The Prime Minister may aim to turn the UK into 'a battle-ready, armour-clad nation'. But the resources that Healey will have at his disposable – 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027 – will probably only, as the head of the German Armed Forces put it describing Olaf Scholz's similarly miserly defence increase, 'fill the potholes'. To meet our security and defence needs, as Cowley points out, will require something more akin to the proposed Nato targets: 3.5 per cent of GDP on defence, and a further 1.5 per cent on defence infrastructure, and it needs to happen sooner than sometime after 2030. Money, however, is not everything. If, as Keir Starmer said at Govan shipyards earlier this month, this is about 'everyone playing their role… Doing their duty to the nation and to each other to preserve our way of life' – a national effort, in other words – then a lot more storytelling will be required. The Prime Minister has lit the rhetorical touch paper. I'm not sure he is clear where the firework is going to go off. I wish John Healey luck. Simon Diggins, retired colonel, Rickmansworth Solving inequalities In his excellent letter in response to the Gordon Brown guest edit on child poverty, John Lowell asks 'What has happened?' (Correspondence, 6 June). The answer is quite simple: a huge growth in inequality. Richard Wilkinson has produced overwhelming evidence over the past 20 years that inequality is the main driver of most of our current societal crises: poverty, declining mental and physical health, homelessness and so on. The Tories and the right-wing media endorse growing inequality as a necessary corollary to higher economic growth. The rest of us know that this is false. And so do the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank. These bodies have publicly stated that growing inequality constrains growth. That makes reducing inequality an economic imperative, not just a moral one. I am certain Rachel Reeves knows this too. The challenge for the Labour leadership is how to combat the hysteria of the Daily Mail et al around the fear that, among other things, if we pursue redistributive policies, we might find billionaires fleeing from the UK. If the IMF does not see this as an economic problem, then why should we? Dick Brown, Buxted, East Sussex F-AI-rweather friend? I read Megan Nolan's article (Personal Story, 6 June) with interest and agreement. This new tech kid on the block has us all rattled, and not in a good way. Nolan is correct that no one wants an AI bot pretending to be their best friend. Friends in the real world offer sane and sensible advice, proffer help and bequeath solidarity when all the world appears to be against one. Nolan's own friendships, which she writes so well about, are down to Earth, proactive and sustaining, not like the sycophantic ones conceived in Silicon Valley. Judith Daniels, Norfolk Lawless lands Megan Gibson rightly states much more should have been done by the international community much earlier in respect to the Netanyahu regime's policy on Gaza (World View, 6 June). Israel has not just flouted international law, but violated the four fundamental aspects of it. These are the Genocide Convention; international humanitarian law (IHL), which covers war crimes; treaties concerning nuclear weapons, which cover the development, testing and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; and the UN Charter on interventionist actions against sovereign states. The Genocide Convention, for example, condemns 'inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part'. And blockades that prevent the flow of medical and food supplies are in direct violation of IHL. International law either needs to mean everything or nothing. Failure to enforce it is a stain on the conscience of those with influence, just as their negligence (or complicity) has been from the onset. Jordan Scott, Newcastle upon Tyne Wealth vs health One can only share Rachel Clarke's incredulity and disgust at the deprioritisation of certain patients and agree with her that the NHS needs greater investment, not less (Health Matters, 6 June). The same applies to social care, especially for those with dementia. The government has announced instead another inquiry because it can't face up to the cost of fair and proper public provision. There is one obvious solution for these problems. The Chancellor should gracefully tell us that she only meant she would not increase taxes on working people, and that now is the time to tax wealth. Properly done, wouldn't that also be a way to solve a lot of other problems too? Michael Chanan, Windsor Rachel Clarke, in her profoundly sad but excellent article, uses one term with which I find myself in disagreement: 'deficit'. Deficit would be appropriate if the NHS were a business, but the clue is in the name. It is a 'service' and it is – and has been for years – underfunded. Were it a business, it wouldn't do hip replacements after old people break the neck of their femur; a business could say, 'Why bother, they're going to die soon anyway?' The NHS needs to be properly funded and we need to tell the truth about how that needs to be done: a properly calculated progressive system of taxation. I'm old enough to remember the time before the NHS. We do not want to go back to anything like that. Jim Maloney, Wigan Write to letters@ We reserve the right to edit letters [See also: Mike Berners-Lee: 'Being a billionaire can make people go nuts'] Related
AsiaOne
03-06-2025
- Entertainment
- AsiaOne
Daily roundup: FairPrice trials smart trolleys in pilot plan to integrate AI — and other top stories today, World News
Stay in the know with a recap of our top stories today. 1. In-store navigation and personalised recommendations: FairPrice trials smart trolleys in pilot plan to integrate AI FairPrice Group (FPG) has revealed plans for a large-scale technology overhaul with its Store of Tomorrow programme that aims to revolutionise the retail experience for customers at their supermarket outlets. According to a press release on Tuesday (June 3), FPG has already begun piloting various digital solutions, such as Smart Carts and digital price cards at one of its FairPrice Finest outlets... » READ MORE 2. Man, 44, charged with murder of 79-year-old woman in Sengkang A 44-year-old man was on Tuesday (June 3) charged with the murder of a 79-year-old woman at a residential unit along Fernvale Road in Sengkang. Lim Yuen Li, who was arrested on Sunday (June 1), was handed one count of murder at the State Court... » READ MORE 3. Kyoto's viral Kichi Kichi Omurice chef is coming to Singapore, here's how you can meet him Fans of Japanese food would probably be familiar with Kichi Kichi Omurice, a popular restaurant in Kyoto that is hard to get a seat at. It's helmed by the charismatic Chef Motokichi Yukimura, who is known for his theatrical meal services and delicious omurice... » READ MORE 4. TXT pop-up store at Plaza Singapura opens in June K-pop boy group Tomorrow X Together (TXT) isn't returning to Singapore just yet but they're bringing something else to the table. Their Ppulbatu Pop-up store opens this Friday (June 6) at Plaza Singapura and will run until June 29... » READ MORE editor@
